THE  ART  OF 
GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


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GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


THE  ART  OF  GEORGE 
FREDERICK  MUNN 

EDITED  BY 
MARGARET  CROSBY  MUNN 

AND 

MARY  R.  CABOT 

WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION  BY 
SIR  JOHNSTON  FORBES-ROBERTSON 


NEW  YORK 
E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 
681  Fifth  Avenue 


Copyright,  1916 
By  E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 


^^NE  thousand  copies  only  of  this 
book  have  been  printed  from 
type,  and  the  type  distributed. 

This  copy  is  number  J I  // 


By  the  kind  permission  of  Messrs. 
Harper  and  Brothers,  some  quota- 
tions from  "The  Martian,"  by 
George  Du  Maurier,  have  been  in- 
cluded in  this  volume. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction  by  Sir  Johnston  Forbes-Robert- 
son  xv 

Biographical  Sketch  1 

Notes  on  Art  89 

Reproductions  of  G.  F.  Munn's  Paintings  .  . 

following  134 

Catalogue  of  G.  F.  Munn's  Known  Works     .  137 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PORTRAITS  page 

George  Frederick  Munn   Frontispiece 

George  Frederick  Munn  at  the  age  of  nine  .  facing  18 

George  Frederick  Munn  as  an  Art  Student  .  "  18 

Margaret  Crosby  Munn   "  55 

George  and  Margaret  Munn  on  the  steps  of 

Francois  Millet's  House  at  Barbizon    .  "58 


PICTURES  following  134 

Meadow  Sweet   "  " 

A  Gray  Day   "  " 

On  the  Kennet   "  " 

Cornish  Trawlers  at  Rest   "  u 

Moonrise   "  u 

Arcadia   "  " 

Daisy  Fields,  Evening   "  " 

The  Chateau  de  Crive  Ceaux   "  " 

An  Old  Master   u  " 

The  Old  Church,  Villerville   "  " 

The  Orchard  Gate  (Brittany)   "  " 

The  Deserted  Chateau   "  u 

Fort  of  La  Hogue   "  u 

The  Breton  Quarry  Workers   "  " 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

PICTURES  following  134 

The  Avenue,  Pont  Aven,  Brittany  ....  "  " 

A  Washing  Day,  Brittany   "  " 

Brittany   "  " 

An  Arab   "  " 

Meadow  and  Trees   "  " 

Old  Trees,  Brittany   "  " 

Venice  (Sketch)   "  " 

The  Old  Fishpond,  Woolhampton  ....  "  " 

Old  Man's  Head  (Etching)   "  " 

Harmony  in  Rose  and  Blue   "  u 

The  Japanese  Screen  (Harmony  in  Blue)  "  " 

Still-Life  Group   " 

Lily  Pond,  Normandy   "  " 

Study  for  Portrait  of  Miss            ....  "  " 

Storm,  Annisquam   "  u 

Seven  Little  Trees   "  " 

Trees  and  Sunset   "  u 

Art  Is  Long  and  Time  Is  Fleeting  ....  u  " 

The  Inlet,  Annisquam   "  " 

The  Abandoned  Farm   "  " 

A  Pool,  Rhode  Island   "  « 

Normandy   "  * 

A  Road  in  Autumn   "  u 

Evening,  Normandy   "  u 


INTRODUCTION 


s 


INTRODUCTION 


On  February  10,  1907,  George  Munn, 
painter,  passed  over  to  the  majority,  and  I, 
his  fellow-student  and  lifelong  friend,  wish 
to  set  down,  as  best  I  may,  a  slight  tribute  to 
his  personality  and  genius. 

His  was  a  rare  spirit — a  steadfast  one — 
and  always  unfalteringly  true  to  the  highest 
standards  of  his  art.  No  petty  trafficking, 
or  time-serving  in  his  work,  ever  dimmed 
his  soul.  He  had  the  rare  courage  to  paint 
to  please  himself  first,  and  the  public  and  the 
buyer — well,  they  did  not  count ! 

In  the  year  1873  he  passed  those  examina- 
tions which  qualified  him  for  studentship  in 
sculpture  at  the  Royal  Academy,  and  I  can 
see  now  the  straight-backed  young  Ameri- 

XV 


xvi 


INTRODUCTION 


can  setting  up  his  clay  in  the  antique  school 
on  his  first  day,  a  "new  boy,"  and  a  stranger 
amongst  us.  His  face  was  pale,  his  hair  was 
dark  and  parted  in  the  middle,  a  sort  of  out- 
rage of  the  fashion  of  those  days;  big,  sad 
and  thoughtful  eyes,  a  slight  mustache,  and 
wearing  the  clothes  of  a  man  of  the  large 
world ;  a  strong  contrast  to  us  all,  for  Thack- 
eray's  art  student  of  the  velvet  jacket  and 
long  hair  lingered  with  us  yet.  Here  was 
an  object  for  the  insolent  patronage  of  the 
older  students!  But  we  were  not  to  hold 
that  hectoring  attitude  long,  for  we  soon 
found  that  what  the  gracious  American 
stranger  said  on  art  "went,"  and  we  hung 
on  his  words,  uttered  with  a  very  slight  but 
most  engaging  stammer. 

He  had  come  to  us  a  gold  medalist  from 
the  Kensington  Art  Schools,  and  soon  took  a 
silver  medal  for  modeling  at  the  R.  A. 
Schools.  Having  passed  into  the  Upper  or 
Life  Schools  sooner  than  most  of  us,  he 


INTRODUCTION 


abandoned  sculpture  and  took  up  painting 
with  the  greatest  enthusiasm. 

His  fine  sense  of  color  was  shown  in  his 
very  first  study.  From  that  day  on  he 
gathered  strength  and  won  the  golden  opin- 
ions of  all  his  brother  students.  Some  of 
the  great  men  were  to  come  of  us — Frank 
Dicksee,  Alfred  Gilbert,  Waterhouse, 
Thornycroft,  Waterton  and  Swan,  all  in 
after  years  to  add  R.  A.  to  their  laurels. 
Percy  Macquoid,  the  archaeologist  and 
painter,  was  also  one  of  us.  What  an  au- 
dacious and  dictatorial  crowd  we  were,  lay- 
ing down  the  law — and  pretty  good  law  it 
was  too — with  all  the  world  before  us,  and 
each  and  all  convinced  we  were  to  be  of  the 
elect ! 

Not  satisfied  with  what  the  Academy 
Schools  could  give  him,  Munn  pursued  his 
studies  at  Julien's  and  Munkacsy's  studios  in 
Paris  and  came  back  a  ripe  painter.  Watts 
chanced  to  see  a  copy  of  one  of  his  works 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

that  Munn  had  made  and  said  to  a  friend,  "I 
must  have  that  man  work  with  me, 9 9  and  so  it 
came  about  that  Munn  was  in  daily  inter- 
course with  that  giant  for  many  months  and, 
amongst  other  things,  he  "laid  in"  all  "The 
Triumph  of  Death"  in  distemper  for  the 
master  to  work  on. 

The  young  man's  determination,  enthu- 
siasm, sincerity  and  reverence  had  won 
for  him  the  highest  possible  training,  and 
he  became  indeed  armed  and  well  pre- 
pared for  the  pursuit  of  the  art  he  so 
dearly  loved.  His  pictures,  both  land- 
scapes and  figures,  were  soon  to  be  found  in 
the  leading  London  galleries;  the  Royal 
Academy,  the  Grosvenor  Gallery,  the  Brit- 
ish Artists,  the  New  and  the  Dudley  gal- 
leries. His  landscapes,  mostly  painted  in 
Brittany  and  Normandy,  were  of  the  highest 
order,  and  some  indeed  as  fine  as  any  that 
have  ever  been  painted.  He  could  draw  a 
tree  that  would  have  satisfied  even  Ruskin, 


INTRODUCTION 


xix 


and  his  sense  of  color  and  tone  was  pure  and 
true  and  his  style  quite  free  from  affectation. 
There  was  an  original  and  individual  qual- 
ity which  pervaded  the  whole  of  his  work, 
combined  with  a  great  refinement  and  a 
great  strength. 

The  painters,  I  should  say,  who  influenced 
his  work  while  a  student,  were  Pelluse,  Ma- 
son, Frederick  Walker,  and  preeminently 
Watts.  Had  health  permitted  him  to  pur- 
sue his  art,  his  name  as  a  painter  would  have 
gone  across  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
lands. 

Reverence  for  what  is  best  in  men  and 
things  is  the  lasting  grace  for  the  man  who 
would  pursue  art;  without  it  he  must  come 
to  naught ;  this  precious  grace  George  Munn 
had  to  the  fullest  degree.  The  charm  of  his 
personality,  his  rare  and  abundant  sense  of 
humor,  his  just  and  upright  mind,  and  all 
the  higher  qualities  that  go  to  make  up  a 
man  made  him  beloved  of  all  his  fellow  stu- 


XX 


INTRODUCTION 


dents  and  all  the  men  and  women  who  had 
the  good  chance  to  come  in  touch  with  him. 
If  a  man  was  worth  his  salt  Munn  had  that 
rare  art  of  making  that  man  "get  a  fine  con- 
ceit o'  himself,"  as  it  were,  and  so  he  was 
a  helper,  an  encourager,  an  inspirer,  a  giver 
of  those  precious  gifts  that  help  the  soul  of 
a  man,  and  that  all  the  dollars  on  earth  can- 
not buy. 

Farewell,  George  Munn!  To  those  who 
knew  you,  you  are  not  passed  away,  for  your 
high  spirit  of  enthusiasm  and  truth  remain 
with  us  for  guidance  and  help  always. 

Johnston  Forbes-Bobertson. 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 
A  BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 

THE  rare  distinction  of  the  genius  and 
personality  of  George  Frederick  Munn 
lay  in  the  extent  to  which  the  love  of  Beauty 
took  possession  of  his  whole  being.  In  him 
the  artist  was  not  separated  from  the  man. 
To  every  one  who  recognized  the  source  of 
his  power,  he  carried  a  message  of  pure 
joy.  There  was  a  vital  strength  and  fresh- 
ness of  life,  touched  by  imagination  and 
humor,  in  his  least  expression  of  what  is 
commonplace  to  most  men,  and  his  atmos- 
phere held  a  sweetness,  nobility  and  strength 
that  were  repeated  in  his  face.  The  vision 
of  Beauty  was  ever  with  him,  transforming 

not  only  his  achievement  in  his  art,  but  ulti- 

1 


2  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MTJNN 


mately  whatever  for  the  moment  seemed 
failure,  into  the  very  wine  of  life. 

His  story,  falling  on  modern  days  of  strife 
for  material  rewards,  seems  to  miss  its  nat- 
ural consummation  unless  it  is  open  to  every 
one  in  need  of  his  illuminations,  as  were  the 
riches  of  his  heart  and  mind  to  those  whom 
he  companioned  most  closely  during  his  life 
in  this  world. 

No  record  of  his  life  would  be  a  true  one 
that  did  not  include  the  illness  resulting  from 
typhus  fever  which  recurred  from  time  to 
time  during  the  last  twenty-five  years  of  his 
life;  stopping  his  career  as  a  painter  and 
changing,  during  the  period  of  its  recur- 
rence, his  point  of  view  and  standards,  so 
causing  a  misunderstanding  of  his  true  char- 
acter and  aims  in  the  minds  of  all  but  those 
who  knew  him  best  and  saw  him  through  all 
the  changes  of  his  life  and  circumstances. 
But  it  is  not  the  purpose  of  this  record  to 
dwell  on  the  misunderstandings  and  compli- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  3 


cations  resulting  from  an  illness,  which  to  a 
man  of  his  power  was  a  tragic  misfortune; 
but  rather  to  attempt  to  show  the  man  as 
he  was  before  his  illness  and  also  in  later 
years,  of  comparatively  normal  health,  when 
through  a  native  strength  of  character  he 
won  a  triumph  of  spirit  over  conditions 
which  would  have  at  the  outset  bereft  most 
men  of  either  the  hope  or  power  to  cope  with 
the  world  on  any  terms. 

He  was  born  August  21,  1851,  in  Rutgers 
Place,  Utica,  New  York,  where  his  parents 
had  gone  to  make  a  home  among  old  friends, 
after  a  residence  of  ten  years  in  Memphis, 
Nashville,  and  other  cities  of  Tennessee  and 
Virginia.  His  father,  John  Munn,  was  en- 
gaged for  many  years  in  establishing  banks 
in  Southern  States,  and  the  fortune  made  by 
him  during  these  years  bears  witness  to  his 
energy  and  sagacity  in  practical  affairs. 
He  was  a  New  Bnglander  by  birth,  and  of 
the  English-Puritan  stock  that  braved  the 


4  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


hardships  and  peril  of  Indian  warfare  along 
the  Connecticut  River  in  the  earliest  days. 

More  than  one  of  the  name  of  Munn 
offered  up  their  lives  in  the  wilderness  to 
bring  civilization  to  western  Massachusetts. 
The  father  of  John  Munn,  Calvin  Munn  of 
Greenfield,  Massachusetts,  entered  the  pa- 
triot army  at  the  age  of  sixteen  and  served 
six  years  until  the  close  of  the  Revolution. 
He  was  at  Saratoga  at  the  surrender  of 
Burgoyne,  in  action  at  Yorktown,  and  one 
of  the  boat's  crew  that  captured  a  gunboat 
on  which  one  hundred  and  thirty  British 
were  killed  and  eleven  made  prisoners.  He 
was  Lieutenant  under  General  Lafayette  and 
with  General  Sullivan  when  he  evacuated 
Long  Island.  At  the  battle  of  Jamestown 
he  was  under  the  command  of  "Mad"  An- 
thony Wayne.  During  Shays 's  Rebellion  he 
appeared  again  in  the  service  of  his  country, 
and  was  in  Springfield,  Massachusetts,  at  the 
time  of  the  attack  on  the  United  States  Ar- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  5 


senal.  His  fervid  patriotism  was  ever 
armed  with  courage  and  endurance.  A 
monument  marks  his  grave  in  Greenfield, 
Massachusetts,  and  is  yearly  dressed  with 
flowers  by  the  citizens  of  his  native  town. 

There  is  a  reference  in  one  of  George 
Munn's  letters  to  "the  trustworthiness  of  his 
family  in  all  branches,  French  and  English 
and  Scotch." 

His  father,  J ohn  Munn,  married  a  South- 
erner, Mary  Jane  Buchanan  Meek,  whose 
great  personal  beauty  was  enhanced  by 
buoyant  health  and  spirits.  The  blending  of 
these  two  natures  may  hold  some  significance 
as  to  George's  inheritance,  for  his  tempera- 
ment seems  to  have  been  a  compound  of 
tropical  intensity  of  emotion,  with  the  keen, 
active  mentality  we  associate  with  Northern 
origins.  John  Munn  was  a  man  of  broad 
and  cultivated  tastes.  Much  of  his  early  life 
was  passed  in  the  home  of  Mrs.  Sigourney, 
whose  influence  doubtless  developed  in  him 


6  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


the  idealistic  inclinations  which  were  as 
notable  as  those  that  seemed  more  practical. 
A  clear  conviction  that  the  welfare  and  hap- 
piness of  mankind  depend  on  the  recognition 
of  Beauty  as  the  supreme  test  of  human  en- 
deavor, led  him  to  make  the  study  of  Art 
an  essential  part  of  the  education  of  his 
children.  He  compelled  their  acquaintance 
with  the  Art-treasures  of  the  world,  without 
reference  to  their  natural  tendencies.  The 
love  of  perfection  in  this  remarkable  man 
was  rooted  in  the  soil  of  large  and  hu- 
mane instincts.  Sometime  before  he  left 
the  South  he  freed  his  slaves  and  later,  when 
he  went  North,  took  with  him  his  faithful 
house-servant.  A  portrait  of  him  in  bas- 
relief,  by  the  sculptor  Calverley,  shows  a 
massive  head  with  noble  features ;  the  whole 
face  expressing  heart,  sensitiveness  and 
strength. 

Of  his  father,  Munn  wrote  in  later 
life  to  a  wise  physician:    "You  have  writ- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  7 


ten  me  exactly  such  a  letter  as  the  finest 
man  I  have  ever  known  used  to  write  me, 
and  that  man  could  be  no  other  than  my 
deeply  beloved  father  and  I  cannot  pay  you 
a  more  delicate  or  a  more  noble  tribute." 
Again  writing  of  his  recollections  of  his 
father  and  mother,  he  said:  "They  are  all 
delightful,  and  even  the  corrections  I  no 
doubt  merited  have  become  precious  and 
have  remained  with  me  like  a  rich  man's 
heirlooms  ever  since." 

Utica  was  a  town  of  solid  and  conserva- 
tive people  under  the  political  leadership  of 
men  like  Senator  Conkling,  Senator  Kernan 
and  Governor  Seymour.  Munn  wondered  at 
"the  strange  love  of  politics"  that  prevailed 
there.  In  Utica  and  later,  in  other  neigh- 
borhoods, the  intimate  associations  of  the 
family  were  with  men  of  virile  life  and  ro- 
bust humor.  His  sister,  Mrs.  Garret  Pier, 
says  that  "as  a  very  little  boy,  George  was 
beautiful  in  the  grand  manner,  having  a 


8  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


noble  head  and  a  wide-eyed,  almost  inspired 
expression  in  his  large  dark  eyes,  which  I 
believe  were  the  true  outlook  for  his  high 
spirit. " 

At  an  early  age  Munn  laid  the  foundation 
for  a  deep  and  permanent  friendship  with 
the  family  of  the  great  naturalist  Audubon. 
Miss  Eliza  Audubon  writes:  "He  came  to 
our  home  in  Audubon  Park,  a  young  boy,  in 
1865 — into  our  household  of  children,  older 
and  younger,  and  from  that  date  was  like  a 
son  and  brother. 

"That  he  was  a  remarkable  boy  in  many 
respects,  there  is  no  need  for  me  to  say: 
that  he  even  then  evinced  the  qualities 
for  which  we,  and  later  the  world,  loved 
him  so  much,  is  not  strange;  but  that 
a  lad  of  his  age  should  possess  certain  at- 
tributes of  dignity,  self-control,  a  peculiar 
reticence  and  an  unusually  high  sense  of 
honor,  such  as  few  persons  even  of  ripe  years 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  9 


can  boast  of,  is  a  thing  to  remember  with 
fond  pride  and  pleasure.  Not  that  he  lacked 
the  joy  of  healthy  youth:  far  from  it:  he 
was  usually  ready  for  fun  and  frolic  with 
those  who  loved  and  understood  him.  But 
he  was  very  discriminating  in  his  choice  of 
associates :  his  temperament  was  an  exceed- 
ingly sensitive  one:  and  there  were  hours, 
and  even  days  when  the  eyes  of  affection 
saw  that  his  mood  was  not  a  light  one :  and 
the  love  that  was  tender  as  a  mother's  and 
a  sister's  never  allowed  these  moods  to  be 
trifled  with:  nor  indeed  would  any  of  that 
warm-hearted  circle  have  wished  to  do  so." 

His  early  efforts  to  adjust  himself  to  the 
demands  of  a  conventional  training  are  best 
narrated  in  his  own  words : 

"I  have  been  terribly  weighed  down  by  my 
appalling  lack  of  technical  education.  My 
dear  father  would  gladly  have  sent  me  to 
a  college  or  university,  but  my  stammering 
habit  robbed  me  of  that  privilege.    The  sad- 


10  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


dest  memories  of  my  childhood,  still  vivid, 
are  those  connected  with  my  difficult  speech. 
When  I  reached  the  talkative  age  I  found 
that  I  possessed  a  set  of  weak  nerves  of 
speech  and  that  they  prevented  free  utter- 
ance of  my  wishes.  Easy  converse,  even 
with  my  playfellows,  was  almost  an  impos- 
sibility. But  as  I  grew  and  the  desire  to  talk 
developed  with  my  strength,  I  found  my 
answers  to  what  was  said  were  rather  wiser 
than  might  have  been  expected  of  a  little  boy, 
for  the  reason  that  I  could  not  answer  at 
once,  and  so  the  chance  was  given  me  not 
only  to  think  twice  before  speaking,  but 
sometimes  ten  times  twice.  Then  this  afflic- 
tion prevented  me  from  reciting  lessons  in 
class  at  school,  and  free  intercourse  with 
even  those  who  did  not  inspire  me  with  awe 
or  fear !  I  could  not  ask  my  way  of  a  police- 
man without  hesitation  or  communicate  my 
wishes  to  a  shopkeeper,  and  so  I  grew  up  a 
rather  lonely  boy,  and  was  not  much  of  a 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  11 


reader,  a  natural  refuge,  one  would  think." 

But  this  enforced  habit  of  silence  bore 
fruit  in  his  increased  capacity  as  a  listener 
when  occasion  offered  him  "the  unrestricted 
flow  of  talk  from  a  host  of  men  and  women 
who  had  won  distinction  in  the  professions 
in  England,  France  and  Italy  and  America." 

His  education  was  to  come,  not  from  the 
secondary  mediums  of  schools  and  books,  but 
from  direct  contact  with  the  vital  Sources 
of  Life  and  Art. 

In  September  14, 1865,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Munn 
with  three  of  their  four  children,  Mary, 
Sarah,  and  George,  the  youngest,  sailed  for 
Europe.  He  was  only  thirteen  years  of  age, 
but  alive  to  those  first  impressions  that  shape 
the  standard  of  a  lifetime.  Of  this  period 
his  sister,  Mrs.  Pier,  says : 

"There  had  been  no  indication  of  any  spe- 
cial trend  towards  the  life  of  an  artist,  before 
this  time,  but  these  two  years  seem  to  have 
been  an  epoch  in  his  career,  a  beginning,  and 


12  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


the  museums  proved  a  forcing-bed  for  his 
genius.  He  frequented  the  museums  of 
Naples  and  Rome,  and  made  friends  of  the 
Italian  artists  engaged  in  copying  the  classic 
marbles.  They  were  but  humble  men,  but 
their  kindly  converse  and  interest  were  per- 
haps the  first  round  of  the  ladder  to  this 
young,  striving  soul.  One  of  these  simple 
men  was  a  young  lava,  or  cameo-cutter  of 
Naples,  named  Stella, — another  was  an  old 
Roman  copyist  or  marble-worker,  Conti. 
Under  their  directions  he  modeled  bits  of 
clay  into  copies  of  the  heads  from  the  bas- 
reliefs  on  Roman  sarcophagi,  etc., — very 
stumbling  little  efforts,  straws  merely,  blown 
by  the  wind  of  his  destiny,  but  intimations 
of  the  irresistible  force  of  that  wind  and  the 
tendency  of  his  nature.' ' 

Among  his  papers  are  many  lists  of  ob- 
jects of  peculiar  interest  during  this  period; 
objects  of  beauty  in  Nature  and  in  the  world 
of  Art  that  communicated  to  him  "the  thrill 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  13 


divine."  Mention  is  made  by  him  of  visits 
to  the  studios  of  W.  W.  Story  in  Rome  and 
Hiram  Powers  in  Florence ;  of  Strauss  mu- 
sic heard  in  Vienna,  and  music  in  Munich 
under  the  leadership  of  Joseph  Gungl;  of 
the  galleries  of  Munich ;  of  Oberammergau, 
and  of  bouquets  thrown  to  the  Emperor  and 
Bismarck  and  impressions  of  the  Court  and 
aristocratic  women. 

In  1867  they  went  to  Paris  and  were  pres- 
ent at  the  opening  of  the  Exposition  by  Na- 
poleon III,  who  was  accompanied  on  this 
occasion  by  the  Empress  Eugenie  and  the  ill- 
fated  Prince  Imperial.  George  was  deeply 
stirred  at  the  sight  of  the  Arts  on  exhibition 
and  enjoyed  the  street  scenes: 

From  Paris  in  the  same  year  they 
journeyed  to  London  and  returned  to 
America.  He  was  then  sent  to  the  Le- 
doux  School  at  Cornwall-on-Hudson,  where 
his  record  appears  to  have  been  made  on 
lava-cutting  and  on  being  expelled  with 


14  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


three  of  the  oldest  boys  for  giving  money 
to  help  a  little  boy  run  away,  who 
had,  they  believed,  been  unjustly  treated  by 
one  of  the  teachers.  His  father  was  indig- 
nant that  Mr.  Ledoux  had  no  other  resource 
in  the  way  of  punishment  except  expulsion. 
This  was  the  end  of  George's  technical 
schooling. 

The  housekeeper  of  this  school,  Mrs. 
Meagher,  was  a  woman  of  much  discernment 
and  balance  of  character.  In  1908,  a  white 
haired,  majestic  looking  woman,  she  recalled 
her  vivid  memory  of  George  Munn  during 
the  years  he  spent  there.  "George,"  she 
said,  "was  a  great  student — very  reserved, 
and  so  superior  to  the  other  boys  that  he  was 
much  alone,  although  he  made  a  great  deal  of 
fun  for  the  boys  when  he  was  with  them. 
His  room  was  next  to  mine  and  was  un- 
heated.  Mine  was  heated  and  when  I  went 
to  Cornwall  to  shop  for  the  school  he  always 
asked  if  he  might  use  my  room  until  I  came 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  15 


home.  He  locked  himself  in  and  none  of 
the  boys  ever  knew  what  he  did  while  there. 
But  he  used  to  show  me  when  I  returned,  the 
little  heads  and  figures  he  had  modeled. 
He  kept  all  his  tools  and  clay  in  a  wooden 
box  and  wrapped  them  up  with  great  care, 
always  in  the  same  pieces  of  paper.  It  was 
a  great  pity  that  Mr.  Ledoux  expelled  him 

for  helping  little  S  D  to  run  away. 

S  was  only  eleven  years  old  and  was  un- 
happy and  homesick.  He  thought  he  had 
been  unkindly  treated  and  George  believed 
this  too.  He  felt  his  expulsion  very  much, 
and  it  was  a  wrong.  He  was  the  finest  boy 
in  the  school.  At  that  time  he  was  very  slen- 
der with  large  dark  eyes  and  a  remarkably 
sweet  voice  in  speaking." 

To  return  to  Miss  Audubon's  recollec- 
tions: "  After  an  absence  of  many  months  he 
returned  to  us,  as  he  did  for  several  years, 
as  to  a  second  home,  and  took  up  his  studies 


16  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


in  New  York  with  one  of  the  foremost  sculp- 
tors in  America,  Calverley.  This  was  in  the 
fall  of  1867,  and  he  continued  with  Calver- 
ley until  he  went  again  to  Europe.  At  this 
time  he  intended  to  make  sculpture  his  life- 
work,  and  showed  decided  talent,  making 
rapid  progress  in  the  art,  and  loving  it 
greatly.  A  model  of  a  baby's  head  which  he 
executed  while  with  Calverley  is  still  cher- 
ished as  a  precious  gift  by  the  owner,  the 
adopted  sister  to  whom  he  gave  it.  Unfor- 
tunately none  of  the  scraps  of  verse  which 
he  wrote  from  time  to  time  for  our  games, 
or  for  small  festivities,  have  been  preserved ; 
though  these  lines  often  contained  real  poetic 
thought  and  feeling." 

As  if  in  compensation  for  his  difficult 
speech  he  showed  when  only  a  boy  this  poetic 
gift,  which  grew  with  his  experience  of  life. 
He  never  mastered  any  form  in  verse,  but 
the  deep  and  true  feeling  and  sense  of  beauty 
of  these  irregularly  rhythmical  poems  is  akin 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  17 

to  that  which  reached  perfection  of  style  and 
form  in  his  painting. 

The  summer  of  1870  was  spent  with  his 
family  in  Switzerland.  The  event  of  special 
meaning  to  him  during  this  year  of  travel 
was  the  Declaration  of  War  by  France  on 
Prussia.  He  saw  the  wounded  in  cattle-cars 
at  stations  on  their  way  to  Paris.  He  and 
his  father  bought  cigars  and  put  them  in  the 
mouths  of  the  wounded,  and  lighted  them  for 
those  whose  arms  were  helpless.  There  was 
great  excitement  wherever  they  journeyed 
and  the  frequent  cry  "a  Berlin/'  by  the 
French  who  expected  to  win  the  day. 

In  London  at  the  Langham  Hotel  they  met 
many  old  friends  among  the  refugees  from 
France.  Here  much  time  was  occupied 
with  visits  to  antiquarian  collections  and 
old  shops, — his  first  acquaintance  with  such 
places,  much  frequented  afterwards. 


In   1868,   when   seventeen,   after  nine 


18  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


months '  travel  in  Europe  with  his  parents, 
he  was  left  by  them  in  London  to  begin  his 
art  studies  at  the  South  Kensington  Mu- 
seum. He  already  showed  the  self-reliance 
which  marked  his  whole  life,  in  refusing  to 
accept  from  his  father  more  than  a  monthly 
stipend,  so  small,  that  not  only  then  but  for 
the  following  ten  years,  he  frequently  went 
hungry  and  inadequately  clothed,  to  first 
learn,  and  then  pursue,  his  art.  He  said 
in  after  years  that,  when  tuition,  studio  rent, 
materials  and  models  were  paid,  there  was 
little  left  for  food!  But  his  burning  ardor 
for  his  work  was  such  that  his  memory  of 
these  years  was  one  of  the  most  precious  of 
his  life.  He  once  said  that,  during  them,  he 
knew  the  "Heaven  of  Art." 

On  entering  the  Royal  Academy  School 
in  1873,  he  was  one  of  a  group  of  men  who 
have  won  distinction  as  painters  and  sculp- 
tors, nearly  all  of  them  adding  R.  A.  to  their 
names. 


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GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  19 


He  loved  London  with  a  lover's  enthu- 
siasm and  romance.  Its  age,  its  vastness 
and  complex  life, — its  darkness  and  fogs 
were  beloved  and  stimulated  his  imagina- 
tion. During  the  summers  he  went  some- 
times alone,  but  often  with  one  or  more  of 
his  artist  friends,  on  walking  tours  through 
the  most  beautiful  counties  of  England. 

These  were  happy  days.  Many  pictures 
were  painted  and  his  sketch-books  are  filled 
with  impressions  of  these  journeys,  and  of 
journeys  in  Prance  and  Italy.  At  night,  at 
the  close  of  a  long  day  of  open-air  painting 
and  tramping,  they  would  walk,  six  abreast, 
singing,  through  the  sleepy  English  hamlets, 
finally  stopping  for  bread  and  cheese  and 
ale  at  some  village  tavern,  where  they  talked 
and  sang  with  the  ruddy-cheeked  farmers 
and  teamsters  who  gathered  there  nightly. 
Munn  could  reproduce  the  very  echo  of  the 
voices  and  intonation  of  these  country-men, 
even  to  the  twist  of  their  jaws  and  the  sol- 


20  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


emn,  strenuous  earnestness  of  their  eyes  as 
they  sang. 

One  summer,  he  and  Seely,  a  student 
at  the  Royal  Academy,  hired  a  gypsy 
van  and  had  it  freshly  painted  and  fitted  for 
a  summer 's  painting  tour.  A  horse  was  bor- 
rowed from  Seely 's  father,  Captain  Seely, 
and,  after  some  days  of  journeying  and 
searching,  a  beautiful  height  was  chosen, 
looking  down  on  the  valley  of  the  Wye,  with 
Tintern  Abbey  just  beneath  their  eyes.  The 
land  belonged  to  a  baronet,  who  was  the 
personage  of  the  neighborhood,  and  he  not 
only  consented  to  their  passing  the  summer 
there,  but  he  and  the  families  of  the  adjoin- 
ing estates  became  very  friendly  with  the 
two  young  painters,  so  that  much  happy  com- 
panionship varied  their  days  of  work.  They 
cooked  their  own  meals,  but  the  dish-washing 
proved  too  much  for  their  patience  and  a 
small  boy  from  a  cottage  near  by  was  hired 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MXJNN  21 


to  take  this  part  of  their  housekeeping  duties 
off  their  hands. 

It  was  during  this  summer  that  Munn 
painted  the  large  study  of  wild  flowers, 
called  "Meadow  Sweet,' '  exhibited  in  the 
Royal  Academy  in  18 — .  Many  notices 
appeared  in  the  leading  London  news- 
papers and  art  journals  of  this  remarkable 
painting,  several  of  them  comparing  it  with 
Fantin-Latour's  flower  pictures  and  giving 
the  palm  to  Munn's  work. 

One  summer  was  passed  in  Cornwall, 
where  the  wild  beauty  of  land  and  sea  in- 
delibly impressed  him.  He  painted  there 
his  " Cornish  Trawlers  at  Rest,"  which  now 
hangs  in  a  private  gallery  in  the  North  of 
England  and  is  the  most  treasured  posses- 
sion of  its  owners.  The  sales  of  his  paint- 
ings made  travel  possible.  Summers  were 
passed  in  Normandy,  and  about  1876  he  went 
for  nearly  two  years  to  Brittany,  living  in 


22  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


an  inn  at  Pont  Aven,  close  to  the  coast  of 
Finisterre. 

Pont  Aven  is  a  typical  Breton  village. 
The  old  houses  surrounding  the  stone-paved 
Place  are  built  of  silver  gray  stone,  many  of 
them  of  the  time  of  William  the  Conqueror. 
The  signs  over  the  little  shop-doors  bear 
names  Welsh  in  spelling  and  pronunciation. 
Pen  Ven,  Pen  G-wynn,  Plouynon,  might  be 
Welshmen  instead  of  Breton  peasants.  One 
of  these  Pont  Aven  men,  a  sailor,  said:  "I 
can  always  speak  with  the  Welsh  sailors. 
We  understand  each  other/ '  There  is  a 
legend  that,  in  prehistoric  times,  Wales  and 
Brittany  joined  each  other  and  were  one 
land.   Who  can  say? 

A  little  river  runs  through  the  center  of 
the  town,  spanned  by  an  old  stone  bridge. 
A  grassy  path  winds  by  the  river,  though 
the  Bois  d' Amour,  and  a  short  walk  through 
the  wood  takes  one  to  an  ages-old  stone 
shrine,  which  Munn  painted  just  as  he  saw 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  23 


it,  with  a  peasant  woman  kneeling  before  it. 
The  river  flows  on  under  the  bridge,  five 
miles  to  the  sea,  widening  rapidly  and  pass- 
ing through  a  land  of  indescribable  solitude 
and  stillness.  One  village  on  the  left  of  the 
river,  and  the  old  Chateau  de  Henan  on  the 
right,  alone  break  the  loneliness. 

The  land  of  Finisterre  is  sown  in  that  re- 
gion with  old  stone  chapels,  so  old  that  no 
one  knows  their  origin ;  small  and  of  simple 
and  noble  architecture  and  bare  and  empty 
vrithin,  kept  from  falling  to  ruin  by  the  rev- 
erence for  all  that  belongs  to  their  church 
is  dear  to  the  Breton's  heart. 

Once  a  year,  a  Pardon  is  celebrated 
in  each  of  these  chapels,  and  there  is 
no  more  touching  sight  than  that  of  the 
processions  of  these  simple  people  in  their 
beautiful  costumes,  the  white  caps  and 
brilliant  satin  aprons  of  the  women  giving 
vivid  color  and  life  to  the  marching  groups. 
A  sort  of  litany  is  chanted  as  they  walk,  set 


24  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


to  a  monotonous  and  strangely  plaintive  air, 
which  seems  to  express  the  longing,  the  pa- 
tience, and  the  inexorable  sorrows  of  pov- 
erty, separation,  and  shipwreck  which  are 
so  interwoven  with  the  lives  of  the  Bretons 
of  the  sea  coast. 

In  1900,  after  his  marriage  to  Margaret 
Crosby,  on  one  August  day  of  glowing  sun- 
shine, Munn  and  his  wife  watched  one  of 
these  processions  at  a  Pardon  at  St.  Nicho- 
las, a  fishing  hamlet  on  the  coast  of  Fin- 
isterre. 

The  priest,  a  strong  sunburned  youth, 
in  white  and  gold  vestments,  stood  on 
the  edge  of  the  bluff  where  the  white 
sandy  soil  was  strewn  with  green  turf 
and  dotted  with  pointed  cedars.  Behind 
him,  in  a  long  uneven  line,  were  the 
peasants,  the  women  in  their  white  caps,  and 
many  of  the  men  carrying  banners  of  pale 
blue  and  gold,  which  fluttered  like  splendid 
butterflies  against  the  deeper  blue  of  the  sky. 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  25 


The  priest  spoke  to  his  bearers  with  solemn, 
almost  severe,  earnestness  in  Breton;  and 
then  turning  to  the  sea,  stretched  out  his 
arms,  pardoning  and  blessing  the  dwellers 
in  the  sea,  as  he  had  pardoned  and  blessed 
those  on  the  land,  while  the  plaintive  chant 
rose  again.  Surely  a  strangely  beautiful 
custom,  and  one  to  be  found  nowhere  but  in 
Brittany. 

During  these  years  he  exhibited  at  the 
Royal  Academy,  Society  of  British  Artists, 
Grosvenor,  Dudley  and  New  Galleries  in 
London,  the  Salon  in  Paris,  and  the  galleries 
of  Birmingham,  Manchester,  Glasgow,  and 
other  cities  of  Great  Britain.  A  silver 
medal  was  awarded  him  by  the  Royal  Acad- 
emy School  for  sculpture,  and  by  the  Gov- 
ernment the  " National"  gold  medal  for 
"success  in  Art"  at  the  South  Kensington 
Museum.  Sir  Frederick  Leighton  was  a  vis- 
itor to  the  Royal  Academy  in  1871  and  gave 
Munn  the  privilege  of  bringing  designs  to 


26  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


his  house  on  Sunday  mornings  for  sugges- 
tion and  criticism. 

In  1870,  he  met  in  Cornwall,  before  the 
days  of  the  Cornish  School,  Percy  Mac- 
quoid,  with  whom  a  close  friendship  was 
formed.  When  Sir  Henry  Peek,  Bart. 
M.P.,  wanted  a  copy  of  Hogarth's  great  life- 
size,  full  length  portrait  of  Capt.  Coram 
(the  founder  of  the  famous  Foundling  Hos- 
pital in  London)  the  commission  was  given 
to  Percy  Macquoid,  who  " farmed  the  job" 
to  Munn,  and  the  latter  painted  it  during 
weeks  of  constant  work,  with  all  the  activi- 
ties of  the  Hospital  going  on  about  him. 

Sir  John  Millais  was  a  visitor  at  the  Royal 
Academy  in  1872,  and  also  in  the  seventies, 
Munn,  Whistler,  Madox-Brown,  Ted  Hughes 
and  Frank  Lathrop  were  drawing  and 
painting  from  the  same  model,  "the  most 
famous  one"  at  that  time  at  Victor  Barth's 
school. 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  27 


Russell  Sturgis  gave  in  Scribner's  Mag- 
azine in  1908  his  estimate  of  Munn's  work 
as  follows: 

"The  paintings  of  George  Frederick 
Munn  are  marked  examples  of  that  tendency 
toward  naturalism  of  the  best  sort  which  is 
characteristic  of  American  landscape  paint- 
ing. 

"  ' Normandy'  shows  a  side  of  his  work 
which  is  indeed  not  touched  upon  in  any  of 
the  reproductions  of  his  paintings  which  fol- 
low. This  picture,  more  than  any  other 
composition  of  his  known  to  the  present 
writer,  is  'impressionistic'  in  its  drawing, 
by  which  phrase  is  meant  that  no  attempt 
has  been  made  to  render  details  or  even  to 
express  strongly  such  important  facts  as  the 
growth  of  the  trees,  the  modulation  of  the 
earth's  surface,  the  articulation  of  the  leaf- 
age, the  building  up  of  clouds.  Such  a  treat- 
ment of  landscape  effect  is  precisely  as  le- 
gitimate as  a  minutely  rendered  set  of  de- 


28  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


tails  working  together  to  build  up  a  result — a 
picture  like  one  of  the  Liber  Studiorum 
prints,  with  great  insistence  upon  the  anat- 
omy of  tree  forms.  Just  as  legitimate,  and 
in  one  sense  more  nearly  artistic,  from  the 
fact  that  it  is  so  much  easier  to  invest  such 
a  study  as  this  with  lovely  light  and  warm 
color  than  it  is  to  combine  those  supreme  ex- 
cellences with  the  severe  drawing  of  natural 
form. 

"But  consider  'Normandy  Sand  Dunes' 
in  which  the  trees  are  drawn  with  almost  a 
Turneresque  touch — with  quite  a  Turner- 
esque  desire  for  accuracy  in  the  anatomy  of 
ramification.  This  picture  is,  indeed,  a 
faithful  study  of  a  hillside  crowned  by  the 
trees  in  question;  but  that  is  precisely  the 
theme  of  these  remarks.  Munn  knew  how 
to  represent  such  a  simple  piece  of  natural 
landscape,  seizing  its  charm  and  recording 
it  for  the  permanent  possession  of  those  be- 
fore whose  eyes  it  would  never  appear  again 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  29 


in  reality.  As  for  its  chief  meaning,  there 
is  really  nothing  more  delightful  than  a 
faultless  piece  of  natural  scenery,  and  all 
that  the  landscape  painter  can  do — all  that 
we  dare  to  ask  of  Martin  or  of  Inness,  of 
Constable  or  of  Turner,  is  to  reproduce  that 
when  seen,  or  insensibly  to  modify  something 
not  quite  so  perfect  until  it  reaches  the  ideal 
glory  which  the  mind  of  the  great  artist 
conceives  as  the  practiced  brush  does  its 
work. 

"  'Brittany'  is  a  picture  reminding  us  of 
what  Homer  Martin  used  to  paint,  during 
his  last  few  years  of  life,  from  1890  to  1897. 
In  it  is  seen  the  same  reserve — the  same  con- 
tent with  a  simple  scene ;  a  slight  hollow  be- 
tween slowly  rising  hills,  and  a  suggested 
water-course  marking  the  bottom  of  the  lit- 
tle valley.  The  top  of  the  hill  on  the  left 
is  marked  by  a  screen  of  trees,  between  the 
trunks  of  which  the  light  of  the  horizon  is 
seen  to  shine — so  thin  is  the  screen,  so  few 


30  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


are  the  trees  which  make  it  up.  In  this  way 
the  hill  is  insisted  on  as  a  narrow  ridge,  a 
part  of  a  rolling  country,  beyond  which  ridge 
another  such  valley  will  be  found,  if  we  walk 
only  a  quarter  of  a  mile  in  that  direction. 
On  the  right  the  same  structure  of  the 
ground  is  visible,  but  there  the  rain  and  the 
rough  weather  have  eaten  away  the  rounded 
hill  into  the  semblance  of  a  little  cliff,  and 
the  scraggy  bushes  emphasize  and  insist 
upon  that  broken  character  of  the  ground. 
Between  these  slight  acclivities  is  the  low- 
lying  valley  with  its  stream,  a  bowlder  or  two 
laid  bare  by  the  deeper  run  of  the  winter 
torrent,  and  what  seem  to  be  dwarf  willows 
here  and  there  set  in  the  wet  ground  near 
the  brook.  Long  and  low  stretches  this 
green  landscape,  a  perfect  reach  of  pasture 
ground  as  seen  in  our  eastern  country-side, 
and  above  it  is  a  sky  full  of  summer  clouds 
of  that  uncertain  August  weather  which 
threatens  and  yet  promises,  offering  alter- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  31 


nation  of  showers  and  sunshine.  The  dis- 
turbed birds  which  fill  the  sky  with  their 
busy  flight,  sweeping  by  as  if  to  escape  a 
threatened  cataclysm,  suggest  a  storm  more 
decidedly  than  the  clouds  alone  can  do.  The 
more  I  contemplate  this  picture,  the  more 
pleasant  it  is  to  me.  It  brings  up  again  that 
obvious  remark  printed  above — that  there 
is  no  landscape  more  lovely  than  a  faithful 
or  slightly  modified  study  of  peaceful  nat- 
ural conditions. 

"  A  piece  of  more  thoughtful  work,  of  more 
deliberate  expression  of  sentiment,  appears 
in  which  a  study  of  a  steep  river-bank  re- 
minds one  of  Homer  Martin's  work  during 
the  summer  he  spent  in  Normandy.  This  is 
an  admirable  composition,  whether  it  owes 
its  charm  to  nature,  almost  wholly,  or  has 
been  in  part  the  work  of  the  artist's  modify- 
ing mind  and  hand.  The  simple  houses, 
crowning  the  cliff  in  the  most  perfect  fash- 
ion, lend  themselves  at  once  to  that  place  in 


32  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


nature  and  in  the  work  of  art;  and  beyond 
them  to  the  right  are  seen  the  spires  which 
suggest  a  larger  stretch  of  the  town  in  that 
direction  and  the  presence  of  a  community  of 
men.  Then  the  extreme  foreground  is  filled 
with  the  fisher's  boat,  a  yawl-rigged  cutter, 
on  the  forward  deck  of  which  a  small  flame 
and  rising  smoke  are  visible ;  whether  this  is 
to  attract  fish  to  the  net  or  whether  it  is  part 
of  the  crew's  cookery  being  uncertain.  It 
makes  a  streaming  banner  of  light  in  the 
foreground,  and  that  is  all  that  we  ask. 
Here,  again,  birds,  numerous  and  in  this 
case  large  and  near  at  hand,  are  sweeping 
by,  showing  us  how  strongly  the  artist  was 
impressed  by  the  free  life  of  the  flying  crea- 
tures. 

"  These  admirable  pictures  are  good  to  see, 
even  in  their  dress  of  black  and  white  repro- 
duction. If  the  canvases  could  be  brought 
together  in  one  of  our  museum  galleries, 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  33 


even  for  a  loan  exhibition,  that  would  be  a 
fortunate  town  and  a  fortunate  museum 
which  should  possess  them  for  a  day." 

This  tribute  of  Russell  Sturgis'  to  Munn's 
work  was  a  spontaneous  expression  of  en- 
thusiasm from  one  who  had  never  seen  him 
and  knew  him  only  by  report. 

One  of  his  oldest  friends,  The  Honorable 
Stephen  Coleridge,  writes  of  him: 

"It  is  now  more  than  twenty-five  years 
ago  that  George  Munn  came  upon  us  all 
in  London,  bearing  about  him  something  so 
fresh  and  strange  as  instantly  to  command 
attention,  and  in  a  little  while  revealing 
such  qualities  of  heart  and  mind  as  to  win 
the  affection  of  all  who  came  to  know  him 
well. 

"Painting  after  all  is  a  form  of  expression 
or  nothing  at  all,  and  a  narrow  mind  and  a 
cold  heart  never  yet  had  anything  to  confer 


34  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


upon  mankind,  but  George  Munn  possessed 
a  wide  vision  and  most  tender  sympathies, 
and  he  cherished  a  sense  of  honor  almost  too 
delicate  for  these  material  days,  and  his  ex- 
quisite sensibilities  and  stainless  taste  were 
present  in  every  line  of  his  work. 

The  picture  of  his  that  I  possess  hung  in 
the  place  of  honor  at  the  end  of  the  long  room 
at  the  Grosvenor  Gallery  in  its  last  year  of 
existence  and  was  called  '  In  Chancery/  It 
is  a  large  work  and  represents  an  old  Manor 
House  standing  desolate  and  empty,  with 
the  garden  before  it  full  of  tall  grass  and 
wild  flowers,  and  behind,  a  mass  of  dark 
immemorial  trees  with  the  rocks  wheeling 
above  them.  The  dignity  and  sorrow  of 
greatness  passed  away  speaks  eloquently 
from  the  splendid  canvas.  The  sense  is 
there  of  ancient  family  honor  and  nobility 
of  life  gone  away  from  the  old  home,  which 
stands  forlorn  yet  still  stately  in  its  loneli- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  35 


ness :  of  silence,  and  abiding  peace.  A  man 
who  could  look  long  at  this  picture  without 
being  deeply  moved  must  have  a  heart  of 
stone. 

4 '  All  great  painting  appeals  to  the  heart 
because  it  comes  from  it,  and  for  this  reason 
I  value  this  picture  more  than  any  that  I 
possess.' 1 

Madame  Frangois  Millet,  the  wife  of 
Frangois  Millet,  and  daughter-in-law  of 
Jean  Francois  Millet,  formerly  Miss  Geral- 
dine  Eeed  of  New  York,  wrote  of  his  paint- 
ings in  the  New  York  Times,  of  April,  1911, 
on  the  occasion  of  a  commemorative  exhibi- 
tion of  his  work  in  New  York,  with  an 
enthusiasm  founded  on  great  knowledge 
and  the  keen  artistic  sympathy  of  a  fellow- 
painter,  the  rare  quality  of  whose  own  work 
has  won  appreciative  recognition  in  both 
America  and  France: 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 

"To  the  Editor  of  The  Neiv  York 
Times: 

"  There  is  a  satisfaction  in  seeing 
justice  done  and  order  come  out  of 
disorder  which  amounts  to  a  keen 
joy.  It  is  with  feelings  of  this  sort 
that  one  goes  from  one  to  another  of 
these  admirable  pictures  by  George 
P.  Munn — gathered  together  for 
the  first  time  four  years  after  the 
death  of  the  painter  and  after  hav- 
ing been  painted  more  than  twenty 
years.  That  these  pictures  were 
painted  twenty  years  ago  is  a  very 
important  fact  to  consider  in  look- 
ing at  them.  It  is  to  be  regretted 
that  others  now  in  Europe  are  not 
here  to  show  the  capacity  for  repro- 
duction of  George  Munn.  But  all 
add  to  a  comprehension  of  the  ar- 
dent enthusiasm  for  nature  and  the 
curiously  pure  taste  of  the  young 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  37 


artist:  for  in  England  at  the  time 
they  were  painted  Constable  and  his 
French  followers  had  not  yet  had 
the  influence  they  have  gained  since. 

i  i  About  twenty  years  ago  there 
were  precious  few  who  were  free 
from  the  morbid  aestheticism  or  the 
commonplace  anecdotism  of  Eng- 
lish art.  That  Munn  admired  Dau- 
bigny  is  plain,  but  his  admiration 
served  to  stimulate  his  own  individ- 
uality, and  his  intense  enthusiasm 
before  certain  manifestations  of  na- 
ture and  their  strong  impressions 
have  been  kept  in  hand  by  the  scru- 
pulous probity  of  anxiety  to  search 
and  find  the  most  frank  and  per- 
sonal rendering  of  the  scene.  That 
Munn  saw  more  and  vibrated  more 
passionately  than  many,  can  be 
seen,  and  proves  that  he  had  the 
quality  in  common  only  with  artists 


38  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


of  race,  not  to  spend  their  enthusi- 
asm in  the  beginning,  but  to  pre- 
serve it  and  pass  on  to  the  spectator 
the  freshness  of  the  emotion  until 
the  last  touch  of  the  brush.  Thus 
in  his  work  certain  skies,  certain 
stretches  of  moorland,  are  so  full  of 
air  and  light. 

"This  is  the  painting  of  a  born 
colorist.  We  are  glad  to  be  able  to 
see  for  the  first  time  the  extent  of 
the  gifts  and  the  breadth  and  flexi- 
bility of  his  art. 

"  Though  illness  prevented  him 
from  painting  during  the  past 
twenty  years,  this  exhibition  should 
convince  and  proclaim  the  rank 
that  George  Frederick  Munn  takes 
and  will  hold  in  American  art. 
One  work  at  least  of  this  remark- 
able artist  should  be  placed  in  a  per- 
manent exhibition  in  New  York  in 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  39 


order  that  an  American  painter  of 
such  great  accomplishment,  strong 
individuality,  and  pervading  sense 
of  beauty  may  come  to  his  own.  It 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  these 
paintings  exhibited  at  the  Cottier 
Gallery  have  stood  the  test  of  time. ' ' 

During  one  winter  in  Boston  his  studio 
was  next  to  that  of  Joseph  Decamp,  who  ex- 
pressed after  Munn's  death  his  admiration 
for  him  and  his  work.    He  wrote  of  it : 

i ■  The  paintings  of  George  Fred- 
erick Munn  represent  a  very 
great  artistic  sophistication.  Per- 
haps their  chief  characteristic  is 
their  tremendous  artistic  refine- 
ment of  perception.  Always  ad- 
mirable and  handsome  in  color,  he 
did  not  lean  to  that  in  preference 
to  everything  else.  Beauty  of  com- 
position and  draftsmanship,  the 


40  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


whole  selection  of  what  he  chose  to 
paint,  his  sense  of  the  beautiful,  his 
drawing  of  nature,  and  of  the  in- 
finite device  that  plants  and  trees 
make  in  nature,  his  personal  choice 
of  how  all  that  went — was  part  of 
his  artistic  sophistication.  His 
pictures  were  compositions  of  the 
composer  and  the  draftsman.  Ob- 
jects are  as  finely  placed  in  them  as 
in  the  best  of  the  Japanese  prints. 
That  is  their  particular  thing  and 
he  had  it.  Artistic  precision  was  a 
part  of  his  temperament  and  yet, 
except  in  a  few  things — composition 
and  draftsmanship — he  was  not 
precise. 

"The  strength  and  beauty  of  his 
mental  equipment  was  shown  after 
his  nervous  attacks  when  he  came 
out  of  them  with  his  mind  washed 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  41 


clear  like  crystal.  He  was  utterly- 
reasonable,  and  with  great  dig- 
nity had  a  modesty  that  made  him 
shrink,  sometimes  from  his  friends, 
as  one  who  would  say  'I  am  not 
worthy. ' 

"The  whole  man,  both  in  rela- 
tion to  his  art  and  to  life,  was  a 
creature  of  such  refinement  and 
delicate  balance  of  artistic  percep- 
tions and  sensibilities  that  he  de- 
manded of  himself,  of  his  effort  and 
of  his  work,  more  than  was  almost 
ever  humanly  possible  and  the  qual- 
ity of  the  work  he  left  behind  him  is 
a  thing  to  be  thankful  for  and  to 
cherish.'  • 


About  1875,  George  Frederick  Watts  saw 
a  copy  of  one  of  his  own  paintings  which 
Munn  had  made.    He  said,  "I  must  have 


42  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


that  man  to  work  with  me,"  and  sent  for  the 
young  man,  who  for  seven  or  eight  months 
worked  steadily  with  the  great  master. 

"Watts  was  then  living  in  Little  Kensing- 
ton House  and  the  two  painters  dined 
daily  together  at  one  o'clock.  Their  re- 
lation therefore  was  one  which  could  have 
no  parallel  in  any  more  formal  acquaint- 
ance. In  speaking  of  this  period,  Munn 
said  that  his  reverence  for  Watts  amounted 
to  awe.  He  had  never  seen  anything 
like  Watts'  absorption  in  his  own  work. 
He  literally  began  to  paint  as  soon  as 
it  was  light  and  continued  until  darkness. 
His  art  and  he  turned  aside  for  nothing. 

On  one  occasion,  the  King,  Edward  VII, 
then  Prince  of  Wales,  wished  him  to  come  to 
a  garden  party  at  Sandringham.  Watts' 
answer  to  the  Prince  was,  "I  can't,  for  I 
have  no  high  hat."  "Come  in  your  soft 
hat,"  said  the  Prince. 

When  strongly  possessed  by  his  creative 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  43 


power,  Watts  talked  little,  and  at  such  time 
Munn  respected  his  silence,  and  the  midday 
meal  was  eaten  together  with  hardly  a  word 
spoken :  but  we  can  well  imagine  that  the  si- 
lence was  full  of  sympathy. 

One  day  when  Watts  had  sent  him  to 
an  unused  studio  to  find  some  canvases, 
the  search  was  a  long  one  and,  in  lift- 
ing out  some  paintings  that  stood  with 
their  faces  to  the  wall,  Munn  came  upon  the 
famous  painting  of  Ellen  Terry  as  Ophelia. 
Its  haunting  beauty  and  pathos  impressed 
him  profoundly  and  remained  with  him  al- 
ways. 

With  years,  a  great  love  of  reading  grew 
in  Munn,  with  a  naturally  fine  discrimination 
for  literature  as  for  all  other  Arts,  and  an 
open  book  usually  lay  on  some  table  or  win- 
dow-ledge near  his  easel.  It  was  most  often 
a  volume  of  poetry,  or  biography,  although 
his  interest  in  books  was  universal  as  was 


44  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


his  interest  in  life;  but  his  best  energies 
were  given  to  the  great  finished  works  and 
their  great  makers. 

Golden  opportunities  were  offered  him  for 
the  development  of  these  tastes.  Carlyle 
was  still  living,  Huxley,  Tyndall  and  Dar- 
win he  met  constantly,  going  in  and  out  of 
Burlington  House.  George  Eliot  was  re- 
ceiving a  coterie  of  distinguished  friends  on 
Sunday  afternoons  at  home  and  was  always 
to  be  seen  at  the  Saturday  "Pops."  She 
had,  at  this  time,  an  enthusiastic  following 
of  young  men,  and  Munn  was  in  close  touch 
with  those  who  knew  her  intimately. 

To  quote  from  Munn's  reminiscences: 
"I  have,  at  rare  moments,  been  conscious 
of  that  strange  elixir  stirring  in  the  brain 
from  which  eloquence  is  born,  demanding 
speech — and  I  have  never  forgotten  a  speech 
made  in  the  House  of  Commons,  some  time 
I  think  in  the  seventies,  by  the  member  from 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  45 

Newcastle,  Joseph  Cowen.  He  spoke  with 
a  strong  burr  or  north  country  accent,  and 
this  time  he  spoke  about  the  sadness  and 
terrors  of  war,  making  a  wonderful  image 
in  words  about  the  consequences  of  battle — 
Death.  The  image,  if  I  rightly  remember, 
was  of  the  Angel  of  Death  hovering  over  the 
land,  her  sable  wings  trembling  and  menac- 
ing its  people.  I  remember  reading  about 
Garibaldi's  visit  to  England  in  '58  (?)  and 
his  stopping,  while  in  the  North,  with  Joseph 
Cowen, — not  then,  I  suppose,  a  Member  of 
Parliament.  I  heard  quite  often  Disraeli 
in  his  prime,  in  the  sixties  and  seventies, 
Bright,  Gladstone,  and  very  many  great 
speakers  and  debaters. 

"I  remember  one  evening,  at  Mr.  Frank 
HolTs  studio  in  St.  John's  Wood,  hearing 
George  DuMaurier  sing  to  perfection,  it 
seemed  to  me.  Mr.  Holl  had  asked  many 
painters  to  spend  the  evening  in  his  studio 
to  see  his  portraits  destined  for  the  annual 


46  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


exhibition  at  the  Royal  Academy,  and  it  was 
on  that  occasion  that  DuMaurier  sang.  And 
this  reminds  me  of  that  other  wonderful 
' Punch'  man  whom  Mr.  Henry  James  has 
written  of  so  searchingly — Charles  Keene — 
a  master  indeed  in  his  way  and  medium.  I 
was  a  member  at  that  time  of  the  Arts  Club 
— then  in  Hanover  Square — and  Keene 
would  come  in  very  frequently  in  the  after- 
noon and  smoke  his  cutty  pipe — a  very  small 
clay — and  talk  delightfully.  No  one  painted 
him  as  Sancho  Panza,  I  fear — more's  the 
pity!  Those  were  deeply  interesting  days, 
nay,  years,  in  my  life  and  the  memories  of 
them  are  curiously  vivid." 

Although  Watts  was  separated  from  Ellen 
Terry  at  the  time  of  Munn's  association  with 
him,  the  young  man  was  constantly  in  her 
companionship  in  the  bloom  of  her  young 
womanhood,  and  at  the  height  of  her  gifted 
and  bewitching  personality.    Sir  Henry  Ir- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  47 


ving  and  Modjeska  he  also  met  frequently, 
and  formed  a  lasting  friendship  with  Johns- 
ton Forbes-Robertson. 

On  June  1,  1882,  he  married  an  English 
widow,  but  the  marriage  proved  unhappy. 
They  were  separated  permanently  in  1885, 
and  later  by  a  divorce. 

At  Villerville,  en  route  to  Venice,  in  1883, 
he  contracted  a  fever  which  developed  on 
his  arrival  into  malignant  typhus.  His  life 
was  spared,  but  he  never  recovered  his  full 
health  or  strength.  Despite  the  repeated 
warning  of  three  Italian  and  four  English 
doctors  Robert  Browning  came  to  inquire 
for  him  every  day,  and  later  often  came  to 
his  studio  in  London. 

Of  Browning,  Munn  said : 

"Robert  Browning  was  undoubtedly  the 
greatest  poet  of  our  time — and  no  truer 
singer  ever  lived  to  grace  literature  or  teach 
mankind.  He  was,  naturally,  and  as  a  di- 
rect consequence  of  his  might  as  poet  and 


48  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


teacher,  in  its  fullest  significance,  a  man — 
brave,  gentle,  beautiful,  alike  in  cast  of 
mind  and  character;  surely  a  living  lesson, 
in  his  whole  life  and  work,  to  all.  The  qual- 
ities that  most  impressed  me  in  him  were  his 
sympathy  and  knowledge. 

"My  first  meeting  with  Mr.  Browning  was 
curious.  I  was  asked  to  dine  at  Mrs.  Arthur 
Bronson's,  in  Venice,  and  it  is  to  this  delight- 
ful woman  he  dedicates  his  last  volume  of 
poems,  'Asolando,' — '  gratefully  and  affec- 
tionately'— and  we  all  know  there  is  no 
one  who  deserves  the  fame  and  honor  that 
it  conveys,  more.  When  dinner  was  an- 
nounced, I  did  not  catch  the  lady's  name  to 
whom  Mrs.  Bronson  assigned  me.  We  sat 
for  a  moment  in  silence — when  I  said  to 
her,  'I  hear  Mr.  Browning  is  at  table — 
do  you  know  him  ? ' 

"  'Yes,'  she  replied,  'we  have  been  very 
dear  friends  for  many  years.' 

' '  She  pointed  him  out  to  me  as  she  spoke, 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  49 


on  the  right  of  our  hostess,  and  I,  for  the 
first  time,  knowingly,  saw  my  literary  Idol 
— the  author  of  'Men  and  Women,' ' Andrea 
del  Sarto,' 4 The  Blot  on  the  'Scutcheon.' 

4  6  After  a  few  moments,  I  said, 6 1  fear  your 
name  escaped  me:  tell  me  yourself  and  I 
promise  not  to  forget  it.' 

"Her  answer  was  4 Miss  Browning!' 

"I  remember  they  made  me  go  home  early, 
for  I  was  then  developing  the  first  stages 
of  malignant  typhus  and  a  few  days  after- 
wards became  delirious  and  remained  so  for 
weeks. 

"Mr.  Browning  came  to  see  me  afterward 
in  my  London  studio  and  I  remember  his 
saying,  apropos  of  the  Browning  Societies  of 
London,  Boston,  etc.:  i Why,  anybody  can 
understand  what  I  mean — except  some  of 
those  early  things — and  I  myself  depend 
a  good  deal  on  these  Browning  Societies  for 
much  that  is  new  to  me  in  some  of  my  early 
work ! ' 


50  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


"This  was  said  with  a  quaint  look  of  fun 
in  his  face  and  eyes!" 

In  Venice,  and  again  two  weeks  after  his 
return  to  London,  while  weak  from  the  ef- 
fects of  the  fever,  Munn  separated  perma- 
nently from  his  first  wife.  He  says,  "I  was 
then  penniless  and  ill.  My  people  were  too 
far  away  to  understand  the  true  state  of 
things.  Illness,  combined  with  pride,  kept 
me  from  appealing  to  any  one  who  might 
help  me.  I,  hungry  and  shabby,  held  my 
own  with  the  loyal  help  of  two  or  three  faith- 
ful friends  until  my  family,  learning  my 
condition  from  a  friend,  sent  for  me. ' , 

Weakened  by  actual  want  and  fever  he 
returned  to  America  where  "the  real  break- 
down came."  "Only  the  love  and  care  and, 
best  of  all,  divine  tact  of  those  nearest, 
saved  me,  and  I  showed  gleams  of  returning 
power."  This  power  proved  to  be  the  high- 
est qualities  of  his  nature ;  his  heroic  endur- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  51 


ance  and  patience,  and  the  strength  of  un- 
selfish, self -obliterating  love  with  which  he 
blessed  the  lives  most  closely  allied  to  his. 

The  motto  adopted  by  him  at  Bellagio, 
June  15,  1871,  "Equal  to  either  fortune,' ' 
was  an  inadequate  expression  of  the  strength 
of  his  spiritual  consciousness,  which  was  as 
natural  and  happy  as  it  was  unrelated  to 
prevailing  theological  opinion.  His  tenet 
was  that  he  believed  in  a  personal  God,  who 
is  a  Father  to  His  children,  whose  only  help 
is  in  their  dependence  on  Him.  What  men 
name  sin  seemed  in  his  eyes  so  close  to  the 
development  that  men  call  virtue, — and  hu- 
man ambitions  and  successes  so  far  removed 
from  the  greatness  of  God,  that  the  mystical 
uplift  of  his  soul  was  calm,  confident,  yet  as 
simple  and  humble  as  the  faith  of  a  child. 
He  felt  himself  equal  to  either  fortune. 

He  once  formulated  a  creed  for  a  society  of 
his  friends  to  be  named  "The  Illuminati"; 
the  object  being  "to  gain  and  give  light: 


52  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


i.  e. :  the  light  of  heaven  and  of  the  world,  the 
Light  of  Knowledge,  the  Light  of  Hope  and 
Pleasure,  of  Charity  to  all  Men;  the  Light 
of  Love  and  Obedience  to  God."  The  mem- 
bers were  to  pledge  themselves  "to  love  one 
another  in  holiness,  to  be  charitable  in  word, 
thought  and  deed,  and  to  be  good  and  kind 
to  the  poor  and  sick,  the  old,  the  young, 
the  unfortunate  and  forsaken,  and  to  all 
animals." — The  last  a  most  characteristic 
touch ! 

In  the  brief  period  between  his  return  to 
London  after  the  fever  and  his  departure 
for  America,  when  illness,  poverty  and  the 
cruel  misery  of  his  broken  career  were  new 
to  him,  he  records  his  enjoyment  of  a  serv- 
ice in  Westminster  Abbey  (August  4,  1885) 
when  "the  singing  and  procession  were  very 
grand. ' '  It  was  his  habit  to  note  on  the  edge 
of  his  sketch  books  texts  that  impressed  him 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  53 


and  he  quoted  constantly  from  the  Bible  and 
the  great  poets  in  these  faintly  outlined  mar- 
ginal notes. 

After  his  return  to  America,  under  the 
tender  ministrations  of  a  specially  beloved 
sister,  Mrs.  Pier,  and  her  husband,  his  forces 
at  length  rallied  so  that,  in  the  summer  of 
1888,  he  was  able  to  join  the  artist  colony  in 
Pigeon  Cove,  Massachusetts.  Prom  there 
he  used  to  go  to  Annisquam,  a  few  miles  dis- 
tant, where  the  sand  dunes,  sand  beaches  and 
marshes,  the  sea  and  inlets  and  low-growing 
trees,  and  bushes,  all  made  a  landscape  that 
had  for  him  great  charm  and  suggestive- 
ness.  But  the  first  outbreak  of  serious 
grippe  in  the  winter  of  1889-1890,  attacked 
him  with  a  sort  of  relentless  fury  and,  from 
the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital  where 
he  was  carried  very  ill,  he  went  to  Brook- 
line,  convalescent  from  grippe  but  weakened 
from  nerve  exhaustion. 


54  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


Years  before,  he  made  a  memorandum  of 
a  book  by  "  Thomas  Ashe,  published  by  Bell 
and  Sons,  London,"  and  continued,  "He 
wrote  flawless  English,  a  model  none  better, 
for  all  poets,  especially  women.  Ashe — 
what  a  suggestive  name : — must  have  loved 
some  woman — but  did  she  refuse  him  as  Sir 
F.  Leighton  and  S winburne 's  loves  did? 
When  I  find  her  will  she  pass  me  by  too  ?  I 
shall  be  ■ equal  to  either  fortune'  when  the 
great  question  is  asked." 

It  now  looked  as  if  his  power  as  an  artist 
was  destroyed,  the  flame  of  his  life  flickered 
as  if  going  out,  while  "Love  had  passed  him 
by,"  and  only  a  heart-hunger  remained  to 
give  poignancy  to  despair. 

But  at  the  moment  of  his  deepest  anguish 
deliverance  awaited  him. 

It  so  happened  that  Margaret  Crosby  was 
staying  in  Brookline  at  the  time  of  Munn's 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  55 


coming,  and  their  meeting  was  like  a  life- 
giving  elixir  to  both. 

The  veil  cannot  now  be  lifted  from  a 
romance  that  was  one  of  the  events 
which  take  the  world  out  of  the  com- 
monplace. There  are  sympathies  that  some- 
times stir  human  beings  to  unerring  in- 
tuitions. By  one  of  these  supreme  intui- 
tions, Munn  recognized  at  once  that  he  had 
found  in  her  the  woman  who  was  for  him  the 
realization  of  his  best  aspirations.  Slower 
to  come  to  acknowledgment,  but  as  sure  in 
prophetic  insight,  she  at  once  divined  his 
greatness  and  set  herself  to  the  task  of  his 
welfare  and  happiness. 

But  the  condition  of  his  health  held  no 
promise,  except  to  the  two  most  deeply  con- 
cerned. By  the  judgment  of  friends  and 
doctors,  a  forced  separation  was  effected 
within  a  few  months  of  their  meeting,  which 
proved  a  source  of  tragic  suffering  to  both, 
and  there  were  in  all  ten  years  of  pain  and 


56  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


separation  before  the  floods  abated,  and  the 
sunshine  of  comparative  health,  freedom 
and  complete  happiness  blessed  their  heroic 
endurance. 

They  were  married  May  17,  1900.  A 
friend  of  great  discernment  who  had  the  op- 
portunity of  observing  them  closely  writes 
of  them:  " There  are  marriages  on  earth  that 
seem  to  be  but  recognitions  of  matings  sol- 
emnized on  some  heavenly  height  before 
the  world  was.  Such  was  the  marriage  of 
George  Munn  and  Margaret  Crosby.  They 
had  a  genius  for  devotion,  and  through  the 
years  of  their  wedded  life  these  two  never 
ceased  to  inspire  each  other  with  comrade- 
ship like  the  sweet,  high  converse  of  the 
early  years  of  marriage." 

There  was  a  masculine  admirableness  in 
Munn  which  exhibited  itself  in  everything  he 
did  and  everything  he  said,  however  much  it 
may  now  seem  that  his  efforts  were  finally 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  57 


crowned  only  with  earthly  defeat.  His  de- 
votion to  his  wife  and  friends  was  luminous 
with  the  strength  and  steadfastness  of  the 
immortal  side  of  his  nature.  He  did  not 
like  rhapsodies  on  his  painting.  There  are 
lovers  of  his  works  who  remember  the  irony 
with  which  in  a  few  words  he  unmasked  their 
ignorance  of  true  art,  or  science,  of  sound 
criticism.  Even  to  the  wife  who  did  homage 
to  his  genius  he  sometimes  said,  "Poor,  de- 
luded little  girl,  what  a  good  showman  you 
would  make!" 

JSTo  flattery  ever  shook  his  judgment 
of  men,  of  manners,  of  right  propor- 
tions. This  gave  his  comments  weight. 
"Across  the  Roses,"  said  his  bride  opposite 
him  at  the  wedding  breakfast  as  she  touched 
her  glass  to  his.  "Across  the  Ages,  Mar- 
garet," he  answered. 

With  him  every  sentiment  touched  the 
eternal  life  of  man.  It  had  no  winding  up, 
no  weakness.    It  was  this  vista  in  even  his 


58  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


witticisms  that  gave  them  tang  and  robust- 
ness. 

Words  had  their  total  value  when  spoken 
by  him.  His  deep  musical  voice  and  the 
slight  hesitation  which  at  intervals  preceded 
a  word,  causing  it  to  come  with  an  added 
force,  gave  it  meaning  and  emphasis;  his 
own  vivid  realization  of  its  purport  and 
his  grasp  and  insight  into  his  subject,  and  a 
background  of  his  imagination  that,  in  some 
subtle  fashion,  made  his  hearer  aware  of  all 
its  possibilities,  often  gave  a  tremendous,  al- 
most dynamic,  power  to  a  word.  The  lis- 
tener felt  to  the  full  its  danger,  its  blessing 
or  its  humor. 

His  vocabulary  was  large  and  pictur- 
esque; a  mingling  of  the  vigorous  Anglo- 
Saxon  of  the  brilliant  Englishmen  with 
whom  he  had  associated  for  so  many  years, 
touched  by  his  personal  gifts  of  poetic  imag- 
ination and  humor.    He  had  the  vernacular 


GEORGE  AND  MARGARET  MUNN  ON  THE  STEPS  OF 
THE  HOME  OF  FRANCOIS  MILLET  AT  BARBIZON 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  59 


of  his  profession, — the  art-talk  of  the  stu- 
dios, and  he  seemed  to  catch  from  the  air  the 
freshest  slang  in  any  country  in  which  he 
happened  to  be  living.  The  result  was  a  rich 
and  racy  phraseology  in  which  every  word 
fitted  its  meaning  with  a  novel  and  impres- 
sive effect. 

This  mastery  of  words  was  shown  in 
his  letters,  of  which  many  hundreds  ex- 
ist and  which  are  full  of  a  spontaneous 
eloquence  and  an  artistic  finish  that  is  as 
rare  as  it  was  unconscious;  and  also  in  his 
many  poems  which  are  full  of  real,  poetic 
expression  and  an  indescribable  depth  and 
sincerity  of  emotion.  Back  of  all  he  said 
was  the  force  of  his  spirit  which  lived  each 
moment  of  life  truthfully  without  pretense 
to  himself  or  to  others.  It  was  this  sin- 
cerity that  made  society  in  its  limited  mean- 
ing irksome  to  him.  He  used  to  say,  "I 
can't  stand  the  talk."  His  sense  of  the  ef- 
fort, the  " talking  to  order,"  often  so  fruit- 


60  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


less  in  any  real  communion  or  pleasure, 
made  him  escape  social  life  in  its  definite  and 
organized  forms.  But  natural,  spontaneous 
companionship  with  his  friends  or  with 
mere  acquaintances,  where  there  was  any 
possible  basis  for  meeting,  was  a  delight  to 
him.  The  natural  elements  of  life  itself 
were  sufficient  to  make  a  Festival  for  him. 
Like  the  Greek  Poets  in  Keats'  ode,  he  was 
"Rich  in  the  simple  worship  of  a  day." 

Russell  Sturgis,  in  his  essay  on  the  Art  of 
George  Munn,  speaks  of  this  quality  in  his 
works, — his  content  with  a  simple  scene. 
He  was  in  touch  with  all  classes  through  a 
democratic  sense  that  was  not  a  theory  nor 
a  conscious  practice,  but  something  innate. 
He  seemed  always  aware  instantaneously  of 
the  man  or  woman,  as  they  really  were,  be- 
neath the  outside  accidents  of  birth  and  oc- 
cupation, and  the  dignity  and  pathos  of  their 
humanity  came  before  everything  else  with 
him. 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  61 


As  with  Eobert  Browning,  the  tone  and 
quality  of  Munn's  voice  was  exactly  the 
same  in  speaking  to  an  inferior  and  to 
an  equal ;  yet  while  this  won  the  love  of  his 
fellow-men  and  women,  no  servant  or  person 
below  him  in  position  ever  ventured  on  a  lib- 
erty with  him.  Some  one  who  had  seen  him 
only  once,  wrote  of  him:  "I  had  an  impres- 
sion of  great  gentleness  and  great  strength, 
as  of  one  who  had  received  his  patent  of  no- 
bility direct  from  Almighty  God." 

He  had  the  hatred  of  destruction  nat- 
ural to  the  creative  temperament.  War,  he 
thought  stupid,  as  well  as  cruel.  He  disliked 
everything  connected  with  it  and  seemed  to 
have  a  prophetic  sense  of  the  time  to  come 
when  the  world  would  waken  universally  to 
the  same  conviction  and  the  method  of  legal- 
ized killing  of  human  beings  by  each  other 
to  settle  wrongs  or  differences  would  be  set 
aside  for  some  more  reasonable  adjustment. 


62  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


When  all  New  York  went  to  Riverside 
Drive  to  look  at  the  warships  anchored  in  a 
sinister  line  in  the  river,  he,  chancing  to  pass 
with  a  friend,  who  afterwards  recollected  his 
words,  did  not  turn  his  head  to  look  at  them. 
"They  are  back  numbers,' '  he  said. 

In  looking  at  the  illustrated  papers,  he 
turned  over  the  pages  with  pictures  of  troops 
without  a  glance,  saying :  ' '  They  are  totally 
uninteresting;  the  lines  are  all  monotonous. 
They  mean  nothing  to  me."  When  he  met 
soldiers  in  the  street  he  said  in  Falstaff's 
words :    4 '  Food  for  powder. ' ' 

He  had  never,  even  as  a  boy,  been  willing 
to  either  fish  or  hunt  and  was  oriental  in  his 
unwillingness  to  kill.  His  regard  for  life  it- 
self in  all  forms  was  united  with  a  fearless- 
ness that  had  its  root  in  his  sense  of  immor- 
tality that  lighted  up  Death  itself  and  took 
all  its  terror  away  for  him  and  played  over 
existence  like  a  quenchless  light. 

Yet  all  this  was  veiled  to  those  who,  from 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  63 


some  accident  of  circumstance  or  limitation 
of  mind  or  temperament,  failed  to  recognize 
him.  To  such  he  remained  silent  and  aloof 
and  made  no  effort  to  reveal  himself.  But 
he  rendered  those  who  did  not  understand 
him  the  same  service  and  kindness  that  he 
did  those  who  were  akin  to  his  spirit. 

During  the  productive  years  of  his  life, 
between  1873  and  1886,  before  the  typhus 
fever  ended  his  active  career  as  an  artist,  he 
worked  incessantly  and  with  great  intensity, 
painting  over  a  hundred  pictures,  the  ma- 
jority of  which  were  very  beautiful  works, 
fully  up  to  the  level  of  his  best  style.  These 
were  both  landscapes  and  figure  paintings, 
more  usually  the  former;  but,  as  he  devel- 
oped in  later  years,  his  desire  and  all  his  ar- 
tistic impulse  tended  toward  portraiture 
and  figure  painting. 

A  famous  American  painter  on  seeing  a 
head  of  an  Arab  that  he  had  painted,  said : 


64  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


"He  will  be  greater  as  a  painter  of  human 
beings  than  of  landscapes."  The  day  on 
which  he  began  a  new  picture  was  a  gala  day 
for  him,  and  at  such  times  he  was  filled  with 
a  strong  enthusiasm  that  was  communicated 
to  any  one  who  happened  to  be  near  him. 

Johnston  Forbes-Robertson,  in  the  trib- 
ute to  George  Munn  quoted  before,  speaks 
of  a  "  reverence  for  men  and  things  being  the 
lasting  grace  for  a  man  who  would  pursue 
art"  and  says:  ' i This  precious  grace  George 
Munn  possessed  in  the  highest  degree. ' 9  He 
saw  life  and  soul  in  all  things  as  Walt  Whit- 
man did.  This  was  not  from  a  conscious 
exercise  of  his  reason,  but  from  some  in- 
voluntary inner  knowledge  or  conviction. 

He  handled  all  inanimate  objects  with 
great  gentleness,  and  on  seeing  some  one 
near  him  throw  a  discarded  box  to  the  floor, 
he  exclaimed :  "How  could  you  throw  down 
that  beautiful  box!    You  hurt  it." 

Often  when  carrying  a  wrap  over  his  arm 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  65 


for  his  wife  or  a  friend,  he  would  answer  if 
they  wished  to  relieve  him  of  its  burden — 
"Why  do  you  take  it  away*?  It  is  so  happy 
here." 

He  was  a  cosmopolite  in  the  breadth  and 
freedom  from  prejudice  with  which  he  re- 
garded all  phases  of  human  existence  in  all 
parts  of  the  world.  This  quality  and  the 
strength  and  fire  of  his  humanity  made  him 
identify  himself  with  any  community  among 
which  he  might  happen  to  be  living  and  he 
drew  the  hearts  of  men  and  women  to  him 
like  a  magnet. 

It  was  difficult  for  him  to  see  or  imagine 
evil.  He  seldom  condemned  any  one,  and 
of  a  wrong-doer  whose  fault  or  sin  had 
not  been  carried  to  a  heinous  degree  he  was 
apt  to  say,  "He,  or  she,  had  been  rather 
silly."  But  real  selfishness,  cruelty,  dis- 
honesty or  impurity  aroused  in  him  a  burn- 
ing indignation  and  anger  that  would  have 
been  hard  for  the  offender  to  face. 


66  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


That  he  was  generous  was  a  natural  result 
of  a  nature  that  instinctively  sought  the  good 
of  his  fellow  men  before  his  own. 

One  instance  out  of  countless  ones  will  suf- 
fice as  a  typical  example.  A  man,  who,  with- 
out being  an  intimate,  could  claim  sufficient 
friendship  to  warrant  an  appeal,  came  to 
him  pleading  need,  and  asking  for  quite  a 
large  sum.  Munn  was  at  that  time  living 
on  a  very  small  income  hardly  sufficient  for 
the  bare  needs  of  existence,  but  he  had  al- 
ways a  sort  of  prevision  which  made  him 
save  from  his  income,  no  matter  how  small 
it  was,  for,  as  he  sometimes  said:  "It  may 
be  needed. ' 9  Needed,  it  usually  was,  but  for 
some  one  else — not  for  himself!  He  was 
convinced  on  this  occasion  that  the  appeal 
was  from  a  real  necessity.  He  replied,  "I 
have  not  seen  as  much  as  the  sum  you  wish 
for  a  long  time,  but  you  shall  have  what  I 
have,"  and  then  gave  all  that  he  had  man- 
aged to  save  from  his  income. 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  67 


There  was  always  in  his  giving  the  spirit 
of  Sir  Philip  Sidney — 1 6  Thy  need  is  greater 
than  mine,"  with  no  concern  for  the  conse- 
quences to  himself.  He  had  the  unique 
power  of  standing  aside  and  letting  his  own 
external  life  wither  that  another  life  might 
bloom — and  doing  it  with  joy. 

In  his  generosity  he  always  touched  the 
Universal  brotherhood  of  man.  This  sense 
of  brotherhood  included  animals,  with  whom 
as  with  Nature  he  seemed  to  have  a  secret 
understanding. 

There  was  a  curious  confusion  in  his  dumb 
companions  between  him  and  their  own  mas- 
ters, and  it  is  remembered  in  more  than  one 
instance  how  the  dog  of  a  friend  would  stand 
irresolutely  when  Munn  parted  from  them 
in  the  street  and  first  follow  Munn  and  then 
his  master. 

In  the  woods  Munn  could  call  squirrels 
and  birds  to  him,  and  his  joy  in  the  fields 
and  forests  was  irresistible  in  its  contagion. 


68  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


He  seemed  to  be  most  completely  himself 
when  leading  a  perfectly  natural  life  in  the 
open.  There  was  in  him  at  such  times — 
in  his  whole  being  and  in  his  care-free  mirth 
— a  mood  that  seemed  to  belong  to  some  pre- 
historic race  when  men  and  nature  stood 
far  closer  to  each  other  than  they  do  now. 

Hawthorne  describes  such  a  being  in  Don- 
atello  and  some  of  his  words  bring  George 
Munn  more  vividly  before  those  who  saw 
him  at  such  times  than  any  others  could  pos- 
sibly do,  if  one  can  imagine  a  faun  who  was 
also  a  spiritual  being. 

"Nature  needed,  and  still  needs,  this 
beautiful  creature ;  standing  betwixt  man 
and  animal,  sympathizing  with  each,  com- 
prehending the  speech  of  either  race,  and 
interpreting  the  whole  existence  of  one  to 
the  other.  What  a  pity  that  he  has  for- 
ever vanished  from  the  hard  and  dusty 
paths  of  life ! 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  69 


"Imagine,  now,  a  real  being  similar  to 
this  mythic  Faun ;  how  happy,  how  genial, 
how  satisfactory  would  be  his  life,  enjoy- 
ing the  warm,  sensuous,  earthy  side  of  na- 
ture ;  reveling  in  the  merriment  of  woods 
and  streams;  living  as  our  four-footed 
kindred  do, — as  mankind  did  in  its  inno- 
cent childhood;  before  sin,  sorrow,  or 
morality  itself  had  ever  been  thought  of! 
I  suppose  the  Faun  had  no  conscience, 
no  remorse,  no  burthen  on  the  heart,  no 
troublesome  recollections  of  any  sort;  no 
dark  future  either. 

"His  usual  modes  of  demonstration 
were  by  the  natural  language  of  gesture, 
the  instinctive  movement  of  his  agile 
frame,  and  the  unconscious  play  of  his 
features,  which,  within  a  limited  range  of 
thought  and  emotion,  would  speak  volumes 
in  a  moment. 

"He  gave  Miriam  the  idea  of  a  being 
not  precisely  man,  nor  yet  a  child,  but,  in 


70  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


a  high  and  beautiful  sense,  an  animal — a 
creature  in  a  state  of  development  less 
than  what  mankind  has  attained,  yet  the 
more  perfect  within  itself  for  that  very 
deficiency. 

"In  Donatello  there  was  a  charm  of  in- 
describable grotesqueness,  hand  in  hand 
with  grace;  sweet,  bewitching,  most  pro- 
vocative of  laughter,  and  yet  akin  to  pa- 
thos, so  deeply  did  it  touch  the  heart. 

' 1  Donatello  snapped  his  fingers  above 
his  head,  as  fauns  and  satyrs  taught  us 
first  to  do,  and  seemed  to  radiate  jollity 
out  of  his  whole  person. 

"  Beautiful,  strong,  brave,  kindly,  sin- 
cere, of  honest  impulses  and  endowed  with 
simple  tastes  and  the  love  of  homely  pleas- 
ures, he  was  believed  to  possess  gifts  by 
which  he  could  associate  himself  with  the 
wild  things  of  the  forests,  and  with  the 
fowls  of  the  air,  and  could  feel  a  sympathy 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  71 


even  with  the  trees,  among  which  it  was 
his  joy  to  dwell." 

Munn  did  not  seem  to  feel  the  need  of  hu- 
man companionship  when  living  under  nat- 
ural conditions  that  satisfied  his  love  of 
beauty  and  freedom.  He  once  lived  alone 
for  two  years  on  the  coast  of  New  England 
in  a  cottage  that  for  the  greater  part  of  the 
year  was  the  only  inhabited  house  on  the 
point  on  which  it  stood.  He  went  for  his 
meals  to  the  little  village  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
away.  The  cottage  was  taken  care  of  by 
people  who  came  from  the  same  distance. 
When  asked  if  he  had  not  been  lonely,  he 
replied,  "I  cannot  say  that  I  was."  In  one 
of  his  letters  to  a  friend,  he  says,  "You  al- 
ways need  human  beings,  but  the  sky  and  the 
flowers  and  the  trees  are  people  enough  for 
me." 

To  prison  in  words  the  essence  of  humor 


72  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


is  perhaps  beyond  the  power  of  man.  Even 
wit  when  reported  apart  from  the  personal- 
ity that  conceived  it,  and  the  moment  that 
gave  it  life,  loses  half  its  power.  With 
George  Munn,  his  mirth-producing  humor 
lay  as  much  in  the  tone  of  his  voice,  in  the 
emphasis  or  inflection  of  a  word  or  the  lift 
of  an  eyebrow  as  in  the  words  themselves. 

A  charming  fairy  tale  tells  of  a  faithful 
servant  who,  to  keep  his  heart  from  break- 
ing for  the  sorrows  of  his  master,  bound 
it  with  bands  of  iron.  When  his  master's 
troubles  were  past  and  he  saw  him  happy, 
the  bands  broke  one  by  one  and  his  heart 
was  free.  The  humor  of  George  Munn  had 
the  power  of  loosening  and  breaking  the 
bonds  of  care  and  sorrow,  so  that  the  spirits 
of  those  who  fell  under  its  spell  were  liter- 
ally dissolved  into  helpless  and  carefree 
laughter. 

To  gain  an  impression  of  what  it  was  like 
one  must  turn  to  Du  Maurier's  enchanted 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  73 


pages,  where  so  often  he  expresses  the  in- 
expressible. In  his  descriptions  of  Barty 
Josselin's  humor,  in  The  Martian,  are 
pages  that  might  have  been  written  about 
Munn. 

Let  us  with  a  reverential  salutation  to  Du 
Maurier,  a  salutation  of  the  heart  as  well 
as  of  the  soul  and  the  brain,  take  some  of  his 
words  about  Barty  Josselin  and  substitute 
the  name  of  George  Munn.  Let  us  change 
and  omit  here  and  there  a  word  or  two  to 
make  our  quotations  applicable  for  our  pur- 
pose, and  let  us  find  a  portrait  in  words  of 
the  humorous  side  as  well  as  of  some  other 
sides  of  Munn's  temperament  for  those  who 
did  not  know  him,  as  well  as  for  those  who 
did. 

In  the  first  place,  his  beauty  when  a  child  was  absolutely 
noble  as  will  be  readily  believed  by  all  who  have  known  him 
since.  And  then  as  a  boy,  how  funny  he  was  without  effort, 
and  with  a  fun  that  never  failed!  He  was  a  born  humorist 
of  the  graceful  kind — ever  playing  the  fool,  and  somehow 
always  apropos;  such  very  simple  buffooneries  as  they  were, 


74  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


too — that   gave   him    (and   us)    such    stupendous  delight! 

For  instance  during  his  school  days.  He  is  sitting  at  study 
and  M.  Bonzig  is  usher. 

"Fermez  votre  pupitre,  Munn,"  (Barty)  said  M.  Bonzig. 

Munn  shut  his  desk  and  beamed  genially  at  the  usher. 

"What  book  have  you  got  there,  Munn — Caesar  or  Cornelius 
Nepos?" 

Munn  held  the  book  with  its  title-page  open  for  M.  Bonzig 
to  read. 

"Are  you  dumb,  Munn?    Can't  you  speak?" 
Munn  tried  to  speak,  but  uttered  no  sound. 
"Munn,  come  here — opposite  me." 

Munn  came  and  stood  opposite  M.  Bonzig  and  made  a  nice 
little  bow. 

"What  have  you  got  in  your  mouth,  Munn?" 
Munn  Shrugged  his  shoulders  and  looked  pensive,  but  spoke 
never  a  word. 

"Open  quick  the  mouth,  Munn!" 

And  Monsieur  Bonzig,  leaning  over  the  table,  deftly  put 
his  thumb  and  forefinger  between  the  boy's  lips,  and  drew 
forth  slowly  a  large  white  pocket-handkerchief,  which  seemed 
never  to  end,  and  threw  it  on  the  floor  with  solemn  dignity. 

The  whole  school-room  was  convulsed  with  laughter. 

"Munn — leave  the  room — you  will  be  severely  punished,  as 
you  deserve — you  are  a  vulgar  buffoon — a  jocrisse — a  palto- 
quet,  a  mountebank!    Go,  petit  polisson — go!" 

The  polisson  picked  up  his  pocket-handkerchief  and  went — 
quite  quietly,  with  simple,  manly  grace. 

As  he  grew  older,  it  was  quite  impossible  to  know  George 
at  all  intimately  and  not  do  whatever  he  wanted  you  to  do. 
Whatever  he  wanted,  he  wanted  intensely,  and  at  once;  and 
he  had  such  a  droll  and  engaging  way  of  expressing  that  hurry 
and  intensity  and  especially  of  expressing  his  gratitude  and 
delight  when  what  he  wanted  was  what  he  got — that  you 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  75 


could  not  for  the  life  of  you  hold  your  own!  Tout  vient 
a  ceux  qui  ne  sait  pas  attendee!  Besides  which,  every  now 
and  then,  if  things  didn't  go  quite  as  he  wished,  he  would 
fly  into  comic  rages,  and  become  quite  violent  and  intractable 
for  at  least  five  minutes,  and  for  quite  five  minutes  more 
he  would  silently  sulk.  And  then,  just  as  suddenly,  he 
would  forget  all  about  it,  and  become  once  more  the  genial, 
affectionate,  and  caressing  creature  he  always  was. 

His  idea  of  a  pleasant  evening  was  billiards  or  cards  or 
music  or  being  funny  in  any  way  one  could;  and  for  this 
he  had  quite  a  special  gift;  he  had  sudden  droll  inspirations 
that  made  one  absolutely  hysterical — mere  things  of  suggestive 
look  or  sound  or  gesture,  and  making  one  laugh  till  one's  sides 
ached.    And  he  never  failed  of  success  in  achieving  this. 

Among  the  dullest  and  gravest  of  us,  and  even  some  of 
the  most  high-minded,  there  is  often  a  latent  longing  for  this 
kind  of  happy,  idiotic  fooling,  and  a  grateful  fondness  for 
those  who  can  supply  it  without  effort  and  who  delight  in 
doing  so. 

Now  and  again  George's  face  would  take  on  a  look  so 
ineffably,  pathetically,  angelically  simple  and  childlike  that 
it  moved  one  to  the  very  depths,  and  made  one  feel  like 
father  and  mother  to  him  in  one!  It  was  the  true  revelation 
of  his  innermost  soul,  which  in  many  ways  remained  that  of 
a  child  even  in  his  middle  age  and  till  he  died. 

He  who  lived  on  bread  and  cheese  for  weeks  to  save  his 
money  for  his  painting  expenses  and  who  was  the  most  ab- 
stemious of  men  would,  when  a  slender  purse  made  a  good 
meal  impossible,  paint  in  words  for  himself  and  some  equally 
hungry  companions  the  boiled  leg  of  mutton,  not  overdone; 
the  mashed  turnips;  the  mealy  potato;  the  capersauce.  He 
would  imitate  the  action  of  the  carver  and  the  sound  of  the 
carving-knife  making  its  first  keen  cut  while  the  hot  pink 


76  GEOEGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


grayy  runs  down  the  sides.  Then  he  would  wordily  paint  a 
French  roast  chicken  and  its  rich  brown  gravy  and  its  water- 
cresses;  the  pommes  sautees;  the  crisp,  curly  salade  aux 
fines  herbes!  And  his  companions,  still  hungry,  would  laugh 
till  their  eyes  watered  as  well  as  their  mouths.  When  it 
came  to  the  sweets,  the  apple-puddings  and  gooseberry  pies 
and  Devonshire  cream  and  brown  sugar,  there  was  no  more 
laughing,  for  then  George's  talent  soared  to  real  genius, — 
and  genius  is  a  serious  thing.  And  as  to  his  celery  and 
Stilton  cheese —  But  there!  it's  lunch-time,  and  I  am  begin- 
ning to  feel  a  little  peckish  myself.  .  .  . 

Without  any  technical  knowledge,  he  had  a  great  love  of 
music  and  grew  more  and  more  deeply  sensitive  to  its  influ- 
ence. First  of  all,  his  priest  friend  would  play  the  "Moon- 
light Sonata,"  let  us  say;  and  George  would  lean  back  and 
listen  with  his  eyes  shut,  and  almost  believe  that  Beethoven 
was  talking  to  him  like  a  father,  and  pointing  out  to  him  how 
small  was  the  difference,  really,  between  the  greatest  earthly 
joy  and  the  greatest  earthly  sorrow;  these  were  not  like 
black  and  white,  but  merely  different  shades  of  gray,  as  on 
moonlit  nights  a  long  way  off!  and  Time,  what  a  reconciler 
it  was — like  distance!  and  Death,  what  a  perfect  resolution 
of  all  possible  discords. 

Then  the  good  Mozart  would  say: 

"Lieber  George — I'm  so  stupid  about  earthly  things  that 
I  could  never  even  say  Boh  to  a  goose,  so  I  can't  give  you 
any  good  advice;  all  my  heart  overflowed  into  my  brain  when 
I  was  quite  a  little  boy  and  made  music  for  grown-up  people 
to  hear;  from  the  day  of  my  birth  to  my  fifth  birthday  I  had 
gone  on  remembering  everything,  but  learning  nothing  new — 
remembering  all  that  music,"  that  came  out  of  heaven.  "And 
I  went  on  remembering  more  and  more  till  I  was  thirty-five; 
and  even  then  there  was  such  a  lot  more  of  it  where  that 
came  from  that  it  tired  me  to  try  and  remember  so  much — 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  77 


and  I  went  back  thither.  And  thither  back  shall  you  go,  too, 
George — when  you  are  some  thirty  years  older!  And  you 
already  know  from  me  how  pleasant  life  is  up  there — how 
sunny  and  genial  and  gay:  and  how  graceful  and  innocent 
and  amiable  and  well-bred  the  natives — and  what  beautiful 
prayers  we  sing,  and  what  lovely  gavottes  and  minuets  we 
dance — and  how  tenderly  we  make  love — and  what  funny 
tricks  we  play!  and  how  handsome  and  well-dressed  and  kind 
we  all  are — and  the  likes  of  you,  how  welcome!  Thirty  years 
is  soon  over,  George,  George!" 

So  this  extraordinary  susceptibility  to  musical  sound  went 
on  growing  in  George  Munn  since  his  troubles  had  overtaken 
him,  and  with  it  an  extraordinary  sensitiveness  to  the  troubles 
of  other  people,  their  partings  and  bereavements  and  wants, 
and  aches  and  pains,  even  those  of  people  he  didn't  know:  and 
especially  to  woes  of  children,  and  dogs  and  cats  and  horses, 
and  ag&d  folk — and  all  the  live  things  that  have  to  be  driven 
to  market  and  killed  for  our  eating — or  shot  at  for  our  fun! 

He  was  funny  in  a  good-natured  manner,  and  made  me 
laugh  more  than  any  one  else.  Always  in  a  good  temper  and 
very  caressing:  putting  his  arm  around  one,  and  was  often  a 
kind  of  jolly,  boon  companion  with  no  disdain  for  a  good 
bottle  of  wine  or  a  good  bottle  of  beer.  His  artistic  tastes 
were  very  catholic;  for,  after  the  great  old  masters,  he  was 
prostrate  in  admiration  before  Watts,  Millais,  Burne-Jones, 
Fred  Walker  and  Charles  Keene. 

I  quote  from  the  French  Journalist's  account  of  Barty 
Josselin:  "I  remark  that  from  time  to  time,  just  as  the 
moon  veils  itself  behind  a  passing  cloud,  the  radiance  of  his 
physiognomy  is  eclipsed  by  the  expression  of  a  sadness, 
immense,  mysterious,  infinite:  this  is  followed  by  a  look  of 
angelic  candor  and  sweetness  and  gentle  heroism,  that  moves 
you  strangely  even  to  the  heart,  and  makes  appeal  to  all  your 
warmest  and  deepest  sympathies — the  look  of  a  very  mascu- 


78  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


line  Joan  of  Arc!  You  don't  know  why,  but  you  feel  you 
would  make  any  sacrifice  for  a  man  who  looks  at  you  like 
that,  follow  him  to  the  death — lead  a  forlorn  hope  at  his 
bidding. 

"He  was  happiest  of  all  with  the  good  denizens  of  Bohemia 
who  have  known  want  and  temptation  and  come  unscathed 
out  of  the  fire,  but  with  their  affectations  and  insincerities  and 
conventionalities  all  burnt  away.  It  is  not  a  bad  school  in 
which  to  graduate,  if  you  can  do  so  without  loss  of  principle, 
or  sacrifice  of  the  delicate  bloom  of  honor  and  self-respect. 

"With  these  he  loved  his  oldest  friends,  those  who  knew 
and  understood  him  best,  and  after  them  the  proletarians, 
who  had  good,  straightforward  manners  and  no  pretension 
— the  laborer,  the  skilled  artisan,  especially  the  toilers  of  the 
sea." 

Again  we  must  thank  Du  Maurier  as 
we  close  these  paraphrases  from  The  Mar- 
tian. 

Munn  was  ambitious,  not  from  a  desire  to 
excel  beyond  others,  but  from  his  love  of  per- 
fection that  made  him  profoundly  earnest 
in  doing  well  whatever  he  did.  That  he  did 
excel,  his  work  as  well  as  his  medals  and  the 
praise  of  his  peers  attest,  and  in  lesser  mat- 
ters the  word  "won"  frequently  occurs  in 
his  little  diaries  after  a  record  of  a  ten- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  79 


nis  or  billiard  tournament,  in  both  of  which 
games  he  delighted. 

In  reviewing  one's  experience  with  hu- 
manity, it  is  not  difficult  to  find  a  fair  pro- 
portion of  human  beings,  both  men  and 
women,  who  are  living  examples  of  a  stern 
moral  code,  in  whom  we  find  that  that  crown- 
ing grace  of  morality,  the  love  that  fulfills 
the  law,  has  never  seemed  to  complete  their 
virtue.  To  George  Munn,  love  was  both  the 
beginning  and  end,  and  through  the  depth 
and  sincerity  of  his  affections,  he  "fulfilled 
the  law"  with  many  supreme  acts  of  un- 
selfishness, entirely  unconscious  that  he  had 
reached  the  height  to  which  all  great  re- 
ligions lead.  He  realized,  as  few  do,  that 
the  happiness  of  the  heart  was  really  what 
counted  in  life.  ' '  The  great  thing, ' '  he  used 
to  say  to  his  wife,  in  speaking  of  human 
beings,  "is  to  make  them  happy/'  and  this 
he  did  in  countless  ways  when  he  was  well — 


80  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


often  like  Barty  J osselin,  by  simply  making 
them  laugh  with  such  abandonment  that  the 
care  and  sorrow  and  struggle  of  life  were 
blotted  out  for  a  happy  moment. 

He  probably  had  as  many  disappoint- 
ments in  womanhood  as  an  ideal,  as  most 
men,  but  he  firmly  held  to  his  belief  that 
women  were  born  to  command  and  that  their 
power  to  direct  should  be  given  the  fullest 
scope.  He  believed  it  was  an  important  part 
of  the  inspiration  that  is  drawn  from  women 
and  his  instinctive  reverence  for  them  was 
such  that  his  hand  went  involuntarily  to 
his  hat  on  meeting  the  poorest  of  old  beg- 
gar women  in  the  street.  Of  one  of  his 
closest  women  friends,  Mrs.  Kennedy  Tod, 
he  frankly  said,  "She  would  make  a  good 
mayor  of  New  York. "  The  question  of  suf- 
frage for  women  did  not  become  a  burning 
issue  until  after  his  death,  but  he  believed 
in  the  suffrage  for  them  on  the  grounds  of 
justice  and  freedom. 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  81 


No  estimate  would  be  complete  or  true 
that  did  not  include  the  mystical  side  of  his 
nature  which  was  inborn  and  which  his 
varied  experiences  of  life  greatly  deepened 
and  developed.  The  unseen  world  seemed 
always  open  to  him  and  his  point  of  view  of 
everything  included  the  great  circle  of  Eter- 
nity of  which  this  life  is  only  a  part.  The 
background  of  his  mind,  to  the  one  or  two 
who  knew  him  most  intimately  seemed  half 
Fairyland,  half  Heaven,  and  it  was  the  in- 
fluence of  this  region  of  pure  Spirit  that 
touches  his  work  with  such  beauty  and  gave 
his  words  and  acts  a  rare  and  haunting  qual- 
ity, strangely  moving  to  the  heart  and  in- 
spiring to  ever  more  lofty  effort  those  who 
had  the  grace  to  be  open  to  his  influence. 

The  great  truths  of  the  most  universal  re- 
ligion, including  its  Christian  development, 
seemed  his  intuitively,  without  instruction. 
The  simple  reverence  and  faith  with  which 
he  would  say  of  a  friend  who  was  suffering 


82  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


hopelessly:  "I  hope  God  will  take  him  soon. 
It  will  be  so  happy  for  him  Up  There," — 
carried  conviction  to  others,  and  he  seemed 
to  follow  the  souls  of  those  he  loved  into  the 
other  world.  Through  every  change  and 
distraction  of  life,  he  prayed,  and  at  such 
times  seemed  to  travel  far  away  from  this 
world. 

No  one  ever  praised  Life  more.  Many  of 
his  letters  are  like  hymns  or  songs  of  joy. 
In  his  happy  moments,  like  Emerson's  Poet, 

"His  feet  were  shod  with  golden  bells 
And  for  him  nature  worked  her  mir- 
acles/' 

He  said  once  that  the  "  critical  attitude 
was  the  cheapest  one  in  the  world,  and  that 
there  was  always  Beauty  even  if  it  were  hid- 
den." 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  83 


The  last  three  years  of  his  life,  Munn  and 
his  wife  passed  their  winters  in  their  studio 
apartment  in  57th  Street  in  New  York — 
an  ample  and  somewhat  picturesque  back- 
ground, where,  surrounded  by  pictures  and 
books  and  music,  they  passed  happy  days. 
During  J anuary  of  1906  the  beginning  of  an 
attack  of  nervous  excitability  showed  itself 
in  him,  and  they  left  New  York,  traveling 
and  remaining  in  the  country  until  the  fol- 
lowing autumn,  when  he  seemed  so  restored 
to  his  normal  health  that  they  returned  to 
their  home. 

He  continued  to  seem  so  well  that  the 
hope  of  his  wife  in  his  restoration  to 
permanent  health  again  returned.  They 
took  up  their  usual  life  and  several  weeks 
followed  full  of  a  serenity  and  joy  that  had 
in  it  no  hint  of  the  coming  shadow.  One 
of  his  oldest  and  closest  friends,  Johnston 
Forbes-Robertson,  was  in  town  and  they  had 


84  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


many  happy  meetings,  one  of  which  was 
in  the  Fifty-seventh  Street  Studio,  where  a 
group  of  twenty  or  thirty  friends  were  as- 
sembled for  informal  talk  and  music.  It  is 
pleasant  to  remember  him  so  near  the  end  of 
his  life  in  the  companionship  of  one  who  is 
associated  with  the  strong  and  happy  days 
of  his  artistic  work,  and  his  wife  was  struck 
by  the  serene  and  joyous  expression  of  his 
face  on  that  afternoon.  Several  weeks  of 
seeming  health  followed,  but  with  the 
coming  of  the  new  year,  January,  1907, 
signs  of  nervous  depression  began  to  show 
themselves  and  his  strength  failed  rapidly. 
Some  one  who  saw  him  frequently  during 
this  year  spoke  of  him  as  "that  broken- 
winged  eagle."  With  the  exception  of  one 
poignant  expression  of  regret,  he  met  these 
depressing  conditions  with  the  uncomplain- 
ing patience  which  is  one  of  the  highest 
forms  of  heroism,  and  never  flagged  in  a  sin- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  85 


gle  external  observance  of  his  daily  life,  up 
to  the  very  end,  which  came  instantaneously 
from  heart  failure  early  in  the  morning  of 
February  tenth. 

The  afternoon  before  his  death,  he  had 
walked  in  Central  Park.  The  ground  was 
covered  with  snow,  the  day  clear  and  sunny. 
The  cloud  that  had  shadowed  his  spirit  sud- 
denly lifted,  and  when  he  returned  to  his 
wife,  who  had  been  prevented  by  a  cold  from 
going  with  him,  he  was  filled  with  joy  and 
spoke  of  the  glorious  sunlight  and  the  happy 
people  he  had  seen.  "It  was  all  so  gay  and 
beautiful,"  he  said. 

Her  hope  in  his  recovery  returned,  only 
to  be  taken  away  forever  for  this  life  the 
following  morning. 

He  had  more  than  once  said  in  his  letters, 
"I  like  sudden  goings  away.  No  time  for 
sad  farewells  and  regrets,"  and  at  the  end 
his  wish  was  fulfilled. 


86  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


He  was  really  known  to  but  few,  but  by 
those  few  he  was  recognized  as  one  of  the 
sons  of  Strength  and  Light  of  whom  the 
world  is  scarcely  worthy  and  who  leave 
behind  them  works  of  Truth  and  lasting 
Beauty  to  light  the  pilgrimage  of  those  who 
remain  and  those  who  are  to  come. 

Of  him  Browning's  words  might  have 
been  written: 

One  who  never  turned  his  back  but 
marched  breast  forward, 
Never    doubted    clouds  would 
break, 

Never  dreamed,  though  right  were 
worsted,  wrong  would  tri- 
umph, 

Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to 
fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake. 


ART  NOTES 


On  the  margins  of  the  sketch-books  of 
George  Munn  were  jotted  in  faint  pencilings 
his  impressions  and  convictions  about  art, 
which  were  continually  in  the  background  of 
his  mind,  and  the  pages  which  follow  have 
been  selected  from  those  in  the  sketch  books. 


LONDON,  1876 


IF  the  National  Art  of  England  be  not  a 
burning  question, — what  in  the  name  of 
Greece  and  Italy  is?  Does  not  the  true 
greatness  of  these  double  blessed  and  mother 
countries  in  art  consist  of  what  their  sons 
did  as  Sculptors,  Painters  and  Poets, — and 
do  not  their  works  point  like  Cathedral 
spires  to  Heaven,  and  "rise  in  our  hearts 
and  to  our  eyes  in  thinking  of  the  days  that 
are  no  more'"?  The  great  master,  History, 
teaches  us  what  these  kindred  Arts  did  for 
the  world  and  such  jewels  as  are  set  in  the 
great  galleries  of  Europe  are  landmarks  and 
lamps  to  guide  our  future  in  all  that  makes 
a  people  truly  great. 

"I  am  wrapt  in  a  most  humorous 
sadness.' ' 

89 


90 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


Painting  has  become  lighter  food  than 
it  once  was,  in  the  good  old  times  when 
Painters  did  glowing  shrine-paintings — 
helps  to  prayer  and  noble  thought  and  deed. 
We  have  changed  all  that  and  now  a  good 
subject  is  one  that  tells  some  pretty  story 
for  a  pretty  people.  Even  men  who  were 
shining  lights  in  the  Germ  movement  now 
paint  dressed-up  dolls  doing  nothing  and 
meaning  less, — devoid  of  any  higher  aim 
than  to  be  sold  to  some  rich  perverter  of 
the  public  taste. 

But  the  great  Masters  are  not  all  dead — 
we  still  have 


Whistler 
Henner 
Dannat 
Walker 


Watts 

Stevens 

Ribot 


Thompson 
Rajou 
Sargent 
Fortuny 


Corot 
Millet 
Mason 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  91 

I  think  the  ideal  must  mean  to  most  of 
us,  Nature  glorified.  Something  in  fine, 
ulterior  to  nature,  better  truly,  but  touched 
by  Art.  A  lesson  in  Beauty  founded  upon 
the  Real  and  reconstructed  by  the  light  of 
Divine  Laws. 

Mr.  Whistler,  I  cannot  speak  of  without 
emotion.  He  is  saying  things  with  his 
subtle  brush,  which  few  seem  to  really  read 
— but  Time  will  wreathe  him  with  Laurel 
from  the  tree  which  gave  Velasquez  a  crown. 
1873. 

The  flowers  in  Art — those  of  beauty  and 
perfume — immortal  lilies — are  very  rare  and 
one  must,  like  the  Swiss  climbers,  work  hard 
indeed  to  reach  them — the  real  Edelweiss 
bloom.  They  only  grow  in  pure,  rarefied 
air,  but  what  fatigue  and  trouble  or  even 
risk  of  life  itself  is  too  much  to  pluck  them 
for  the  world  below? 


92  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


Nothing  can  be  more  dangerous  for  the 
fame  of  a  professor  of  the  Fine  Arts  than 
to  permit  (if  he  can  possibly  prevent  it)  the 
character  of  a  mannerist  to  be  attached  to 
him,  or  that  he  should  be  supposed  capable 
of  success  only  in  a  particular  and  limited 
style.  The  public  are,  in  general,  very 
ready  to  adopt  the  opinion  that  he  who  has 
pleased  them  in  one  peculiar  mode  of  com- 
position, is,  by  means  of  that  very  talent, 
rendered  incapable  of  venturing  upon  other 
subjects.  The  effect  of  this  disinclination 
on  the  part  of  the  public  towards  the  artifi- 
cers of  their  pleasures,  when  they  attempt 
to  enlarge  their  means  of  amusing,  may  be 
seen  in  the  criticism  too  frequently  passed 
upon  Actors  or  Artists  who  venture  to 
change  the  character  of  their  efforts,  that 
in  so  doing  they  may  enlarge  the  scale  of 
their  Art. 

Disappointment  whets  our  appetite  for  the 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  93 


better  time  when  the  hand  will  work  with  the 
eyes  and  brain.  The  great  Artist-painter 
possesses  a  divine  life  and  strength  like  steel 
to  triumph  over  every  difficulty — and  what 
living,  glorious  lessons  for  all  time  have  been 
the  life-long  battles  of  some  of  them  with 
their  unappreciative  and  be-fooled  public. 
A  man  of  genius  is  like  a  musical  instru- 
ment, it  must  be  guided  and  touched  by  lov- 
ing hands  or  it  will  be  mute.  None  shall 
know  of  all  the  silent  music  longing  to  be 
free. 

No  one  dislikes  the  commonplace  or  trite 
saying  more  than  the  true  Artist,  but  in  writ- 
ing from  experience  one  must  go  over  well- 
known  paths  and  deep  ruts  to  teach  truisms. 
Else  why  write?  Now  what  the  beginner 
does  not  know  and  the  Master  seems  to  recog- 
nize and  work  with  a  masterly  knowledge  of, 
is,  that  painting  is  nature  treated  with  a  full 
understanding  that  a  reproduction  is  impos- 


94  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


sible,  and  he  who  compromises  the  best  is  the 
greatest  Artist-painter.  Now  in  English, 
the  expression  Artist-painter  is  an  unknown 
term.  We  say  artist  or  painter,  but  in 
France  they  link  the  two  words,  and  to  many 
people  it  has  a  beautiful  significance.  It 
means,  I  believe,  the  perfect  marriage  of 
the  artistic  power  with  the  skill  of  a  sound 
technical  mastery  over  the  material  and  the 
way  to  paint.  Now  to  illustrate  this — 
Alfred  Stevens  is  a  great  Artist-painter. 
Frederick  Walker  a  great  artist  but  with, 
comparatively  speaking,  little  painting 
power;  that  is  to  say,  his  artistic  feeling 
and  poetry  were  far  in  advance  of  the  prac- 
tical skill  to  paint,  both  in  his  nature  and 
training. 

Velasquez  was  a  perfect  artist  and  painter. 
So  in  our  time  is  Whistler.  Rossetti  was 
a  bad  painter  but  a  very  great  artist  and 
poet.    To  be  truly  a  great  painter  in  its  best 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  95 


and  completest  sense  one  must  possess  the 
two  qualities.  There  are  as  many  artists 
in  the  profession  in  England  in  proportion 
to  the  number  as  there  are  in  any  country, 
France  not  excepted.  But  the  French  lead 
the  world  to-day  in  national  splendor  of 
painting  in  all  its  phases  and  they  too  have 
been  blessed  in  possessing  real  painter-poets. 
The  French  Millet  was  a  marvelous  poet  in 
Art,  but  no  great  painter.  Corot  had  the 
two  qualities  which  go  to  make  up  the  genius. 
But  the  Art  student  can  make  a  list  for  him- 
self if  he  understands  clearly  what  is  meant 
by  artist-painter  and  can  distinguish  the  one 
from  the  other.  He  must,  of  course,  know 
what  good  technical  painting  is,  and  what 
endows  a  picture  with  poetic  sentiment. 

Art  is  a  sealed  and  locked  book  with  a 
thousand  golden  keys — when  one  is  found 
that  fits  and  will  open,  the  world  is  the  bet- 
ter for  the  discovery. 


96  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


Men  often  hug  their  vices  when  their 
power  to  enjoy  them  is  gone.  Why  do  these 
men  (R.  A.'s)  cling  to  their  pride  of  Place 
so  long  before  resigning  in  favor  of — 
possibly  other  men  just  as  bad — but  still 
new  names  would  be  a  boon  to  the  critic  at 
least ! 

At  the  moment,  1885,  there  is  no  Academi- 
cian who  is  doing  fine  color.  Millais  has 
lost  all  sense  of  it  and  the  use  of  sable 
brushes  and  the  extent  to  which  he  seems 
to  use  them  would  damn  any  free  or  really 
noble  color. 

Watts  is  past  his  prime. 

Orchardson  is  a  good  colorist  in  a  certain 
way,  a  good  colorist  of  the  Scotch  school! 
But  color  is  of  no  school  or  period.  Is  it? 
We  want  a  better  sense  of  gray  in  a  woman's 
cheek  than  a  streak  of  Prussian  or  Antwerp 
blue?    These  remarks  apply  to  Mr.  Pettie, 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  97 


too — another  4 4 Scotch"  colorist!  Mr.  Holl 
is  now  a  marvelous  machine — turns  out  al- 
most really  noble  work  like  a  Photographer. 

But  money  is  the  thing,  and  if  a  fund  could 
be  started  to  keep  good  men  in  the  Path  of 
Virtue,  I  for  one  will  send  a  noble  cheque. — 
Holl  is  fine,  fresh  and  always  the  same — no 
better,  no  worse,  for  which  we  must  be  duly 
grateful.  Leighton  is  a  great  decorative  ar- 
tist (the  highest  walk  in  Art), — a  graceful 
draughtsman — successful  in  composition, — 
the  most  perfect  man  for  the  great  position 
his  sterling  merits  have  won  for  him.  May 
Heaven  bless  him  and  permit  him  to  lead  us 
for  many  a  long  year  to  come ! 

Onlow  has  done  some  sound,  fine  work — 
but — well,  I  can't  explain  it  all!  Only  look 
at  the  Philip  IV  at  the  National  Gallery  and 
all  I  want  to  say  will  dawn  on  the  reader.  I 
would  rather  not  mention  the  rest  of  the 
forty  R.  A.  %    They  need  more  lashing  than 


98  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


a  weak  (?)  man  like  myself  can  afford  to 
give.  They  are  supposed  to  be  in  their 
prime ! 

We  need  not  aim  too  carefully  at  Beauty. 
It  is  universal  and  exists  in  myriad  forms. 
Hit  but  one,  and  fame  is  your  reward.  The 
young  painter  should  from  the  first  draw  in 
color.  Let  him  associate  as  much  as  pos- 
sible with  the  young  men  of  his  profession. 
Let  him  get  the  fine  flower  of  new  ideas  when 
he  needs  them,  from  them,  and  then  go  to 
the  Old  Masters  for  confirmation. 

Do  not  try  to  climb  the  whole  tree  of  Art 
as  Michael  Angelo  did.  Grasp  one  branch 
and  never  let  it  go  till  you  are  safely  astride 
of  it  and  then  cling  to  it  till  its  bark  has 
grown  over  your  hands  and  you  are  one  with 
its  life  and  growth. 

Remember  that  the  true  artist  does  not 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  99 


need  a  casket  of  jewels  to  make  beautiful 
harmonies  and  contrasts  of  colors.  Genius 
and  even  talent,  can  do  all  with  the  cheapest 
tube  colors.  Five  in  number — the  primaries 
— red,  blue,  yellow,  white  and  black,  or  a 
piece  of  charcoal,  a  bit  of  brown  wrapping- 
paper,  and  his  thumb.  Black  paint  as  used 
by  Velasquez  and  Whistler  is  more  beautiful 
in  the  effect  it  produces  than  a  rainbow,  or 
the  jewel  room  in  the  Tower  of  London — as 
Art  it  is  finer  in  tone  than  the  sunlit  Alps. 
Yet  on  the  other  hand,  do  not  be  afraid  of 
color.  The  artist  must  first  be  drunk  with 
color  and  line  and  gamble  recklessly  with 
both,  trusting  to  experience  and  Providence 
for  the  result.  The  great  masters  of  Tone 
seem  to  have  suffered  and  struggled  before 
its  beauty  was  revealed  to  them. 

Study  your  model,  but  do  only  what  is 
necessary  for  beauty  and  expression.  Do 
not  make  a  dictionary  of  items.    Never  let 


100         GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


your  picture  know  how  serious  your  inten- 
tion is.  If  your  work  discovers  your  pro- 
found interest  it  will,  like  a  coy  maid,  throw 
every  obstacle  in  your  way  and  nothing  will 
come  of  the  wooing.  Treat  your  motive 
slightly  and  when  you  get  the  upper  hand 
press  your  suit  with  every  energy  in  your 
powder  and  then  discovery  is  of  no  moment. 
You  win  with  ease.  For  a  portrait,  an  un- 
taught, intelligent  person  is  often  the  best 
critic  of  a  likeness. 

When  working,  lose  your  own  identity, 
but  assume  that  of  no  one  else,  however 
great,  or  however  much  you  may  admire 
him  or  his  artistic  methods.  God  has  made 
nobles  of  some  men  in  every  art.  An  en- 
thusiastic admiration  and  even  worship  of 
their  genius  is  healthy  for  the  soul,  but  in 
working  listen  to  the  still,  small  voice  that 
speaks  to  you  and  follow  its  bidding  what- 
ever it  may  dictate.    Do  not  work  too  much 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  101 


with  your  hands,  but  constantly  with  your 
eyes.  When  you  do  work,  do  so  with  care- 
ful boldness  and  you  will  have  the  freshness 
and  strength  to  win.  All  artists  know  how 
subtly  beautiful  the  ugly  can  be  but  do  not 
choose  it  often.  The  great  French  masters 
have  worn  this  idea  threadbare  and  they  are 
not  to  be  beaten  in  its  execution.  Kemem- 
ber  always  that  a  good  subject  is  often  a 
painter's  ruin.  Too  much  story  is  perdi- 
tion. Leave  that  to  the  literary  man  and 
let  him  tell  it  in  words  as  it  should  be  told. 

Work  and  exercise  in  the  morning  and  at- 
tend to  other  duties  and  pleasures  of  life 
after  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  What 
we  call  Beauty  steals  into  our  hearts  and 
wants  to  live  there.  But  it  must  be  turned 
out,  for  the  benefit  of  mankind. 

Tell  great  truths  with  big  brushes.  Look 
at  Nature  largely.    Attend  the  marriage  of 


102         GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


gray  tones  and  gray  skies.  Do  not  see  a  tree 
or  a  sky  singly,  but  grasp  the  subtle  harmony 
of  the  whole,  like  the  union  of  two  grand 
notes  of  music.  One  and  indivisible — each 
beautiful  in  itself — and  together  poetry. 

Take  your  Art  seriously  and  pursue  it 
unswervingly  for  its  own  sake.  Too  many 
friendly  critics  are  more  dangerous  than 
strong  drink.  Let  good  work  and  success 
drive  the  smile  from  your  lips,  but  take  heed 
lest  the  heart  grow  sad,  the  f  earf ullest  thing 
in  life.  Let  love  sweeten  work  and  pleas- 
ure, and  both  become  divine. 

Nature  is  never  Art — but  a  store-house 
filled  with  inexhaustible  material  for  all  the 
Arts — the  wind  sighing  in  the  trees  and 
rushing  through  the  tall  grass,  have  sug- 
gested sublime  harmonies  to  the  musician. 
The  fierce  battles  of  bird  and  beast  have 
helped  the  conception  and  to  add  tragedy  to 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  103 


the  actor's  rendition  of  hate  and  anger ;  even 
the  Art  of  love  has  learned  much  from  the 
tenderness  of  all  nature  for  its  kind  and  off- 
spring. The  Greeks  modeled  their  Elgin 
Marbles,  and  their  faultless  coins,  from  study 
of  their  Athletes  and  the  beauty  of  their 
classic  women ;  so  with  each  and  every  Art — 
and  always  with  an  added  beauty  in  propor- 
tion to  the  artist's  power  and  poetry.  First 
of  all  learn  to  observe  Nature :  or  in  simple 
speech  to  use  your  eyes,  even  in  the  dark, — 
for,  shut  or  open,  they  still  see  as  we  see  in 
dreams,  or  as  Helen  Keller  sees  with  her  so- 
called  6 i  sightless  eyes 9  9 !  Look  at  a  face  and 
see  if  the  hair  be  straight,  the  eyes  small  or 
large  in  proportion  to  the  face,  the  tip  or 
angle  of  the  pose  of  the  head — if  a  short 
or  long  upper  lip — if  the  expression  be  com- 
monplace or  poetic,  if  the  mouth  be  firm  or 
a  weak  one  and  all  these  things  and  more 
are  to  be  observed  in  just  one  look  of  one 
second  or  sixty.    Then  take  as  long  as  you 


104         GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


choose  to  remember  your  observations.  Un- 
til you  grasp  the  meaning  of  this  observing, 
remember  drawing  is  useless  and  therefore 
impossible. 

All  Artists — real  Artists — are  brothers, 
and  know  the  quality  of  any  art  at  a  glance : 
— that  is  to  say,  the  Elgin  Marbles  are  su- 
preme for  exactly  the  same  reasons  that  the 
great  musical  compositions  are  supreme  in 
that  art — and  the  same  applies  to  the  great 
Velasquez  pictures.  The  great  Shakespeare 
plays,  the  Greek  Tragedies  (possibly  the 
most  profound  dramatic  productions  ever 
written  in  any  language),  the  Greek  tem- 
ples, Milton's  " Paradise  Lost,"  the  Bible, 
Homer,  Dante,  etc.  They  are  all  alike — 
brothers  or  cousins,  in  that  they  are  made 
by  masters  who  worked  in  certain  kindred 
laws  known  by  the  chosen. 

The  Throne  of  Art  is  a  magnificent  struc- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  105 


ture, — its  columns, — Velasquez,  Titian,  Rem- 
brandt, Tintoretto. 

Emerson's  ' 'Errand  from  the  muse  to  the 
poet  concerning  his  Art" — its  great  teach- 
ing, its  glorious  insight,  its  splendid  elo- 
quence are  a  burning,  living  cry  to  all  with 
even  Talent  to  persist  and  do  with  might 
what  God  has  put  into  their  souls. 

Painting  to  me  means  color,  else  why  paint 
at  all?  But  make  the  discovery  early  in 
your  artistic  life  whether  or  no  the  gods 
have  gifted  you.  If  not,  drop  the  brush, 
rainbow-tipped  as  it  was  meant  to  be, — and 
work  in  some  other  material :  you  may  still 
be  an  artist. 

Velasquez 's  noble  blacks — Fortuny 's 
beautiful  whites — strange  that  they  were 
both  from  the  country  of  bright  and  dazzling 
colors. 


MISCELLANEOUS  NOTES 
Chopin's  Mazurka  Op.  68,  No.  1 

IT'S  all  color  music,  and  it  delights  a 
painter.  I  think  I  could  paint  a  Ma- 
zurka, though  it  has  been  said  by  a  critic 
that  this  form  of  music  is  for  the  common 
people,  and  the  Polonaise  for  the  swells ! 

Mix  your  petitions  to  God  with  your  best 
work  and  never  fear  but  that  He  will  answer 
your  prayer. 

Love  all  men  and  you  enter  God's  aristoc- 
racy. 

Every  true  man  derives  true  nobility  from 
God.    He  chooses  them. 

Do  a  noble  action  and  He  will  pluck  a  quill 

106 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  107 


from  an  Angel's  wing,  dip  it  in  the  milk  of 
His  divine  kindness  and  run  it  through  all 
the  little  sins. 

Fear  of  the  devil  and  poverty  are  the 
curses  of  most  men's  lives.  Fight  the  first 
to  a  finish,  and  face  the  other  with  your 
best  work. 

Show  me  a  real,  natural  criminal  and  his 
history  will  have  lacked  Love. 

The  Ideal  is  not  so  far  away,  or  above  us. 
Stretch  up  a  bit,  and  it  will  meet  you  half 
way. 

The  ugly  is  sometimes  beautiful  and  like 
music  to  the  musician. 

Even  sketches  are  best  shown  in  frames. 
The  moon  would  be  a  silly  thing  without  its 
sky. 


108         GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


One  need  not  aim  too  carefully  at  Beauty 
and  Fame — they  are  big  things. 

Wagner — He  knew  that  there  was  a  vast 
audience  awaiting  him  with  a  thirst  for  in- 
tellectual music.  He  supplied  the  demand 
and  we  are  no  longer  bored  by  trivial  tunes 
and  parodies  of  life  on  the  opera  stage. 

Bernhardt  without  doubt  possesses  the 
best  talent  for  the  stage  of  any  woman,  bar- 
ring Desclees,  of  our  time.  Her  resources 
are  endless  and  magnificent  and — she  knows 
the  power  of  advertisement! 

1870.    (This  was  before  the  day  of  Duse !) 

Sarasate  is  simply  musical  genius  per- 
sonified. He  too  is  a  master  in  its  great 
sense,  and  God  will  certainly  give  him  a 
violin  for  the  Heavenly  Choir. 

Though  I  know  nothing  of  his  Art,  yet  my 
Art  makes  me  see  when  he  succeeds  just  as 
surely  as  if  I  were  a  master  in  music.  You 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  109 


know  what  I  have  always  said,  viz. :  that  all 
governing  principles  that  make  for  beauty 
and  distinction  are  the  same  in  all  the 
Arts. 

To  be  really  happy  yourself  you  must 
have  a  passion  for  the  happiness  of  others. 

Don't  prop  things  up,  build  them  up. 

What  we  want  after  all  in  a  Doctor  is  con- 
fidence. It  is  not  what  he  can  do  for  us  but 
what  we  can  do  for  ourselves,  believing  in 
him. 

Then  this  matter  of  taste.  "Oh,  I  know 
what  I  like."  Yes,  and  it's  lucky  for  Bir- 
mingham and  Manchester  and  the  cut  glass 
manufacturers  and  the  diamond  merchants 
that  you  do,  and  continue  to  think  you  do, 
for,  if  it  were  not  so,  they  would  perforce 
go  to  the  wall  and  into  bankruptcy  in  ten 
minutes  and  would  have  to  go  into  some  hon- 
est business,  like  insurance. 


/ 


110         GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


People  clever  in  one  direction  do  not  do 
or  say  clever  things  on  strange  ground. 

If,  as  some  claim,  the  truly  esthetic  Poetic 
Art-life  may  be  had  at  any  price  in  America, 
why  have  our  novelists  not  made  it  more  of 
a  background  for  their  work  and  heroes? 
Why  Europe  so  often? 

Candles  and  lamps  should  be  burned  where 
all  good  pictures  are  hung,  and  no  furnace 
heat.    Gas  is  expensive  and  inartistic. 

Kindness  and  courtesy  are  natural  things 
to  the  truly  great,  the  duffer  needs  them  to 
ensure  success. 

It  is  quite  compatible  with  genius  to  know 
where  the  hammer  is,  and  to  tub  every  morn- 
ing. 

Lose  your  identity  while  at  work  and  look 
at  the  result  with  childlike  eyes. 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  111 

If  you  want  to  do  a  good  likeness  of  a  man, 
paint  a  stranger,  not  a  man  you  know  well. 

Do  not  carve  the  capitals  till  the  founda- 
tions are  laid. 

They  (the  Academicians)  seem  divorced 
from  sense  "and  the  reality  of  things.' ' 

Why  don't  they  apply  the  test  of  color 
blindness  to  would-be  painters,  just  as  they 
do  to  army  men  and  engine  drivers'? 

The  Iconoclast  is  not  a  reformer  but  is 
apt  to  be  an  artistic  ass. 

The  Iconoclast  smashes  only  the  semblance 
of  the  real,  his  reach  never  gets  at  the  ideal. 
It  is  too  far  above  him. 

Re-forming  is  all  very  well  but  is  a  vulgar 
idea,  generally,  for  the  new  form  is  usually 
worse  than  the  old. 

They  err  who  teach  that  he  who  star-gazes, 


112         GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


stumbles.  Keep  your  eyes  on  the  stars  and 
never  lower  them,  but  walk  carefully  and 
an  added  sense  will  be  given  you  to  feel  the 
pitfalls  and  briars  in  your  path.  All  the 
diamonds  are  not  in  dung  hills. 

Should  pathology  in  literature  go  hand 
and  hand  with  Art"?  Ibsen,  the  master  of 
this  form  of  teaching,  failed,  and  he  had  real 
power.  Give  me  medical  books  undiluted 
with  story  or  garnished  with  "Art"! 

Poetry  must  never  buckle  down  to  "com- 
mon" sense.  If  it  does,  it  must  tip  her 
wings  with  golden  light  and  sweeten  the  bit- 
ter pill. 

Why  does  the  Supreme  Being,  or  the  un- 
seen Force,  whatever  that  may  be,  present 
problems  which  cannot  possibly,  even  with 
the  aid  of  science,  lead  the  investigation  to 
a  definite  end? 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  113 


We  don't  know  what  we  believe  till  we 
talk  or  write  or  give  expression  in  some  way, 
to  our  inmost  thoughts  and  convictions. 

Why  this  urging  one  on  for  the  securing 
of  Eternal  Life  ?  This  life  is  no  less  impor- 
tant, for  if  decently  and  holily  lived  Eternal 
Life  follows. 


DOMESTIC  ARCHITECTURE  AND 
DECORATION.    A  FRAGMENT 
(1898) 

UTN  architecture  alone  man  looks  back 
A  upon  the  masterpieces  of  the  past,  not 
as  points  of  departure,  but  as  ultimate  at- 
tainments. Content  for  his  own  part,  if  by 
recombining  the  elements  and  reproducing 
the  forms  of  these  monuments,  he  can  win 
from  an  esoteric  circle  of  archaeologists  their 
praise  of  reproducing  some  reflex  of  their 
impressiveness. " — Viollet  le  Due. 

Many  of  us  would,  after  acquiring  the 
knowledge  and  taste  to  travel  abroad  and 
study  the  architectural  glories  there,  become 
architects ;  but  this  very  taste  for,  and  love 
of  the  beauties  of  this  wonderful  art,  come 
to  us  too  late  in  life,  and  many  men  of  ar- 
tistic natures  miss  their  vocation.    Take  any 

114 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  115 


town  or  city  in  America  and  examine  the 
most  costly  buildings,  and  we  find  them  al- 
most invariably  the  most  pretentious  in  de- 
tail and  ornament,  and  without  doubt  the 
ugliest.  It  would  seem  that  our  architects 
had  studied,  nay,  copied  in  many  instances, 
the  worst  European  models,  when,  had  they 
been  men  of  taste  and  educated  in  their  art, 
they  might  have  been  inspired  to  follow  the 
many  examples  of  perfect  art  we  find  scat- 
tered so  lavishly  in  every  country  in  Europe. 
We  seem  possessed  with  the  idea  that  the 
most  expensive  house  in  town  is  the  most 
beautiful  and  worthy  of  admiration.  The 
reverse  is  almost  invariably  the  case.  It 
takes  a  genius  to  spend  a  large  sum  worthily 
and  with  the  best  results.  In  many  of  our 
cities  and  country  towns  we  find  really  beau- 
tiful houses  of  small  cost,  well  built  (but  too 
often  of  wood) ,  well  and  fittingly  designed, 
and  satisfactory  to  the  dweller  therein  and 
the  passer-by. 


116         GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


Simplicity  in  all  forms  of  art  is,  and  must 
be,  forever  "in  style and  so  let  not  the  pos- 
sessor of  anything  good  of  its  kind  be  per- 
turbed in  spirit  over  possessing  a  house  or 
picture  not  in  the  prevailing  style  at  the  mo- 
ment. If  it  be  fine,  in  either  or  in  all  cases, 
it  is  in  style  eternally. 

There  is  surely  no  more  instructive, 
educational  fad  abroad,  than  that  of  aes- 
thetic house  decoration.  I  say  educational, 
in  its  best  and  broadest  sense,  because  it 
touches  the  rich  man  who  can  afford  a  beau- 
tiful interior  to  his  house,  it  teaches  his  chil- 
dren, his  friends,  casual  visitors  and  serv- 
ants; for  is  it  not  through  the  eye  that 
nearly  all  our  best  impressions  are  conveyed 
to  our  brain? 

We  have,  but  very  slowly  to  be  sure, 
begun  a  Renaissance  of  beautiful  house 
decoration,  which  has  flowered  sturdily 
and  seems,  in  the  great  majority  of  cases, 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  117 


to  be  in  the  best  hands,  for  have  not  such 
men  as  La  Farge,  Francis  Lathrop,  and  a 
few  others,  all  too  few  for  this  immense 
country,  devoted  their  taste  and  best  years 
to  this  endless  and  truly  beautiful  mode  of 
personal  expression,  making  our  dwellings 
lovely  to  live  in,  harmonizing  walls,  ceilings, 
floors,  furniture;  transforming  and  giving 
the  touch  of  distinction  to  the  dwellers  there- 
in, and  binding  all  the  rooms  together,  either 
with  subtle  contrasts  of  color  and  form,  or 
a  complete  harmony  running  through  the 
whole  house.  This  gives  the  fortunate  in- 
habitants a  curious  satisfaction  and  sense 
of  fitness,  and  is  carried  to  the  kitchen  and 
third  and  fourth  floors,  where  those  who 
serve  their  master  and  mistress  are  noise- 
lessly taught  to  understand  some  of  Nature's 
harmonies  repeated  in  all  that  goes  to  make 
up  what  we  understand  by  the  house  deco- 
rator 's  art.    This  may  be  magnificent  or  sim- 


118         GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


pie, — and  cheap  also,  if  placed  in  the  hands 
of  a  man  of  taste  so  far  as  actual  money 
expended  goes. 

In  either  case  what  better  way  can  we 
instruct  our  children  than  by  bringing 
them  up  surrounded  by  distinction  in  this 
form  of  Art?  It  is  just  as  easy  to  live 
with  good  form  and  color  as  with  the  ter- 
rible wall-papers  and  ghastly  furniture  of  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ago.  Nay,  it  should  be 
easier,  and  once  the  demand  is  created  by  the 
best  artist  decorators,  we  shall  be  housed  fit- 
tingly, and  sweetness  and  light  in  our  sur- 
roundings will  prevail. 

Nature  teaches  us  the  point  I  wish  to 
insist  on,  in  endless  lessons  and  in  end- 
less variety!  Break  open  an  apple  and 
see  the  lovely  color  and  form  of  the  hous- 
ing of  the  seeds,  open  an  oyster  and 
you  have  his  marvelous  dwelling  revealed, 
with  his  pearl  exquisitely  and  fittingly 
sheltered.    Only  think  of  the  deep  brown 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  119 


seeds  in  a  melon ;  the  bird  in  her  nest,  or,  it 
may  be,  the  merman  and  his  maid  in  their 
opalescent,  sea-washed  grotto.  They  know 
naught  of  bad  taste  and  machine-made  fur- 
niture !  They  walk  on  a  carpet  of  sea  weeds, 
intricate  and  varied  in  form  and  dainty 
color;  is  not  all  about  their  Sea-House 
strangely  beautiful  and  made  appropriate 
by  the  Master  Decorator  who  teaches  the 
wise  with  a  prodigality  no  man  can  estimate 
or  utilize? 

Mural  painting  should  be  revived,  easel 
painting  having  cut  it  out,  so  to  speak,  in 
public  estimation.  The  average  modern  ar- 
chitect shows  a  lamentable  lack  of  educa- 
tion. It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  ultimate 
achievements  of  architecture  and  decoration 
are  all  of  the  past.  Apropos  of  this,  and  for 
example,  take  the  French  cathedrals  of  the 
13th  century,  notably,  Notre  Dame  of  Paris, 
Chartres,  Bourges,  Rouen,  Amiens,  Rheims, 
etc.,  and  five  hundred  other  cathedrals  and 


120  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 

churches  of  that  period  all  over  Europe. 
Can  we  show  anything  modern,  or  of  our 
time,  comparable  for  one  instant  to  the  ar- 
chitectural and  decorative  splendors  of  such 
masterpieces?  And  again  let  us  cite  these 
marvels  of  domestic  architecture.  Can  we 
show  anything  to  compare  with  the  Chateaux 
of  Coney,  Josselin,  Pierrefonds,  Chaumont 
and  Chenonceau  ?  Much,  if  not  all,  of  what 
we  now  call  the  colonial  style  of  architecture 
was  built  not  by  architects  but  by  skilled 
English  carpenters  and,  curiously  enough, 
the  ornamentation  was  of  purely  classic 
origin.  These  houses  are  beautiful,  sober, 
fitting  and  picturesque. 

What  we  call  our  American  style  of  ar- 
chitecture, that  is  to  say,  those  dwellings  de- 
signed by  a  very  small  number  of  our  best 
architects,  are  charming  and  creditable,  but 
of  course  the  domestic  architecture  of 
Prance  is,  in  its  variety  and  artistic  splen- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  121 

dor,  unrivaled.  The  Musician's  house  at 
Rheims,  and  Francis  I's  house  on  the  Seine 
in  Paris  are  beautiful  examples. 


THE  DE  CHAVANNES  DEC- 
ORATIONS 


I 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Transcript: 

In  last  Sunday's  Herald  a  rather  savage 
attack  upon  Puvis  de  Chavannes  and  his 
decorations  in  the  Boston  Public  Library 
appeared,  and  as,  in  the  opinion  at  least  of 
many  of  the  best  painters  of  our  time,  these 
paintings  do  decorate  a  noble  building,  I  feel 
that  some  protest  should  be  made  against 
this  critic's  dull  criticism,  which,  coupled 
with  the  recent  decision  of  the  Art  Commis- 
sion that  Mr.  Macmonnies'  Bacchante  is  un- 
suited  [did  they  say  unfit?]  to  adorn  and 
eternally  dance  in  the  library's  beautiful 
court,  has,  I  must  own,  considerably  startled 

me.    Many  of  us  who  admire  that  statue  and 

122 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  123 


these  "bad"  decorations  in  the  Public  Li- 
brary are  painters  and  sculptors,  and  truly 
love  all  that  contributes  to  sweetness  and 
light,  to  morals,  and  to  the  city  beautiful, 
and  so  we  feel  that  this  art  commission  and 
the  Herald  art  critic  have  blundered,  and 
are,  to  put  it  mildly  quite  unfit  to  lead  or 
guide  public  taste  in  art  or  morals  in  modern 
Athens. 

I  am  unable  to  defend  the  statue  or  its 
generous,  but,  alas!  mistaken  donor,  Mr. 
McKim,  for  I  can  see  no  indecency  in  what 
man  copies  from  one  of  God's  creations; 
but  I  can  and  do  take  issue  with  much,  if 
not  all,  that  this  critic  of  the  Chavannes 
paintings  says  regarding  so  much  beauty, 
decorative  beauty,  mark  you,  as  is  contained 
in  these  panels  by  this  great  French  painter. 
I  grant  that  the  drawing  is  faulty  and  the 
masses  and  details  are,  sometimes,  distinctly 
not  beautiful,  not  beautiful  as  Veronese, 
Tintoret,  Velasquez  (quaint  as  are  some  of 


124         GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


the  Spanish  skirt  fashions)  are  beautiful, 
but  surely  lovely  in  color  and  tone,  delight- 
fully unconventional,  fitting  as  decorations, 
suggestive  of  a  beauty  all  too  rare  in  modern 
art  and  just  literary  enough  to  make  them 
go  with  the  building  and  sing  in  harmony 
with  its  purpose. 

These  decorations  are  not  as  wonderful 
as  those  (by  the  same  hand)  in  the  Sorbonne 
and  Pantheon  in  Paris,  but  they  are  nobly 
conceived,  truly  decorative,  lovely  in  qual- 
ity of  tone  and  color,  and  fitting  in  every  way 
to  adorn  a  city's  best  building. 

Let  some  more  worthy  painter  than  the 
writer  of  these  lines  keep  this  ball  a-rolling ; 
for  the  question,  if  such  there  be,  as  to  the 
real  merit  of  these  decorations,  is  something 
of  an  art  education  in  itself.  In  fine,  art, 
since  the  best  Greek  period,  has  never  been 
for  the  hoi  polloi  and  no  one  expects  these 
decorations  to  be  a  "nine  days'  wonder." 

But  give  them  more  time,  and  surely  our 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  125 


children,  and  their  children,  more  surely, 
will  call  us,  or  some  of  us,  "men  of  taste," 
and  the  reasons  will  grow  with  them,  and 
those  reasons  are  written ' ' large"  on  the  wall 
a  serious  man  climbs  when  he  sets  out  on  that 
long  but  never  tiresome  road  that  leads  to  a 
niche  in  the  temple  of  knowledge  and  fame. 

Why,  then,  are  these  panels  good  ?  They 
were  made  by  a  serious  man ;  an  artist  long 
before  he  became  " serious."  They  are  the 
result  of  time,  his  time  and  that  of  the  ages 
before  him.  No  lightly  accepted  commis- 
sion these,  but  Puvis  de  Chavannes  made 
them  after  years,  let  us  say  fifty  years,  of 
work  or  experience,  if  you  like,  and  surely 
he  has  given  us  his  best,  or  nearly  so. 

A  painter's  reasons  for  his  faith  are  these : 
First,  they  are  appropriate  and  decorative. 
Second,  they  are  serious  and  noble  and  fit- 
ting in  conception.  Third,  it  would  be  dif- 
ficult to  find  a  better  man,  better  fitted  by 
the  test  of  time  to  fill  the  space  so  delicately 


126  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


and  in  harmony  with  the  severe  building, 
and  the  severe  Puritan  who  will  rest  before 
them  and  certainly  criticise! 

You,  Mr.  Editor,  have  grave  duties,  not 
only  to  "art,"  but  to  the  public,  else  I  might 
take  up  these  panels  one  by  one  and  show 
cause  why  one  anonymous  critic  should  not 
teach  painters,  at  least,  what  is  good  or  bad 
in  a  profession  they  have  served  with  all 
their  might,  and  counted  not  the  cost. 

II 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Herald: 

In  the  Herald  of  Sunday,  November  1,  the 
art  critic  of  that  journal  wrote  what  to  many 
of  us  seemed  a  most  inconsiderate  notice  of 
the  panel  decorations  by  Puvis  de  Cha- 
vannes,  in  the  Boston  Public  Library.  No 
one  replying,  I,  a  painter  by  profession, 
wrote  a  few  words  in  defense  of  this  masterly 
French  decorator,  and  my  letter  was  printed 
in  the  Evening  Transcript  of  November  7th. 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  127 


In  the  Herald  of  the  15th,  the  critic  of  the 
Herald  takes  notice  (in  the  Fine  Arts  col- 
umn) of  my  letter  to  the  Transcript,  in,  what 
many  men  think,  a  rather  unfair  way. 

It  is  to  be  remembered,  both  by  the  Herald 
art  critic  and  myself,  that  we  are  discussing 
the  work  which  is  the  ultimate  word  of  a 
man  whom  the  art  world  has  proclaimed 
great  in  mural  decoration.  This  should  not 
restrain  or  limit  the  honesty  or  courage  of 
our  opinions,  but  it  should  at  least  impose 
on  us  the  obligation  to  abstain  from  person- 
alities and  tricks  of  speech.  If  thirty 
years  of  hard  work  as  an  art  student — we 
really  never  seem  to  progress  further — be  a 
qualification  to  speak  on  this  subject  of  the 
Chavannes  decorations,  then  I  must  be  par- 
doned if  I  set  down  very  briefly  my  convic- 
tions against  those  of  this  writer,  published 
in  the  Morning  Herald  of  November  1st. 

There  is  much  to  be  said  in  qualifying  crit- 
icism of  several  of  these  decorations,  but  this 


128         GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 

critic  has  not,  pray  observe,  gone  into  par- 
ticulars. 

Well,  Mr.  Editor,  we  painters  by  study 
and  profession  see  some  nods  by  this  Jove, 
and  I  will  indicate  a  few  at  random.  First, 
M.  De  Chavannes  is  guilty  of  some  grave 
faults,  the  result,  possibly,  of  carelessness 
or  intentional  naivete,  and  I  will  endeavor 
to  point  them  out,  not,  of  course,  in  detail, 
or  too  carefully,  but  merely  for  those  who 
can  read,  and  run.  To  begin  with  (this, 
remember,  is  the  reverse  of  the  medal,  and 
not  its  glorious  side,  which  wholly  escapes 
this  critic's  notice!),  some  of  the  drawing  is 
faulty  and  certain  of  the  silhouettes  of  the 
various  forms  are  certainly  open  to  criti- 
cism. I  will,  with  rigid  briefness,  explain 
this  a  little  for  the  laymen  and  our  " critic/' 
and  will  take  at  random  Raffaello  Sanzio's 
portrait  of  Jeanne  d'Arragon  in  the  Louvre. 
In  this  picture  we  have  a  truly  noble  work 
of  art,  like  the  Parthenon  marbles  in  qual- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  129 


ity,  every  form  contained  in  it  essentially 
beautiful;  not  only  beautiful  when  seen  as 
hung  in  the  Louvre,  but  even  a  photograph 
of  it  placed  upside  down  on  the  easel,  or  side- 
ways, shows  marvels  of  form.  The  sleeves 
and  the  slashings  in  the  sleeves,  the  disposi- 
tion of  all  the  forms,  the  lights  and  shadows 
and  their  shapes,  even  if  the  picture  be 
turned  so  that  it  rests  on  either  of  its  four 
sides,  display  a  superb  ensemble,  and  a  won- 
derful series  of  lovely  forms,  each  perfect, 
literally  lovely  shapes  in  themselves,  regard- 
less of  the  painting  as  a  whole.  Well,  does 
Puvis  de  Chavannes  rival  such  faultless 
work  ?  Alas !  no ;  for  this  is  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  we  are  not  given  to  overmuch 
thought  in  such  matters,  mere  details  to  us, 
but  vital  problems  to  the  Greek  and  Italian 
masters  and  giants.  Now  let  us  turn  to  the 
merits  of  these  beautiful  panels,  and  to  Pu- 
vis de  Chavannes'  justly  won  laurels.  Why 
does  our  Boston  " critic"  not  mention  them? 


130  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 

The  beauties  are  many  and  sound;  I  mean 
sound  and  living  for  all  time. 

There  is  no  dark  in  them  as  biting  as  the 
blacks  in  the  marble  of  the  staircase;  thus 
they  are  delicate,  flat  decorations,  framed 
by  the  gold  and  black  marble.  They  are  not 
pictures  in  the  ordinary  meaning  of  the 
word ;  they  are  lovely  arrangements  of  color, 
inviting,  not  demanding,  the  attention  of 
those  who  mount  the  stairs  presumably  on 
serious  business  or  study. 

Surely  no  chart  or  detailed  elucidation  is 
needed  to  describe  these  beautiful  panels, 
and  I  hope  it  will  not  be  deemed  necessary 
by  those  in  authority  to  print  and  circulate 
anything  of  the  kind.  These  decorations, 
and,  pardon  me  if  I  insist  a  little  on  this 
point,  are  not  pictures,  conventional  pictures, 
with  a  story  and  sometimes,  alas!  a  strong 
literary  flavor  (better,  generally,  than  the 
paintermanship  that  is  used  to  elucidate 
them),  but  flat,  almost  shadowless  arrange- 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  131 

ments  of  color  masses,  done  with  the  big 
decorator's  mind  perfectly  clear  as  to  their 
fitness  and  place  in  one  immense  architec- 
tural scheme.  And  so  let  us  realize  that  of 
the  more  important  decorations  in  the  li- 
brary those  by  Puvis  de  Chavannes  and  John 
Sargent  alone  are  fitting  and  in  the  proper 
spirit.  But  surely  no  more  need  be  said  on 
a  subject  so  well  understood  by  serious  men, 
backed  as  they  are,  by  all  the  great  men  of 
the  past  who  were  painter-decorators.  The 
late  Lord  Leighton,  P.  R.  A.,  once  said  to 
me:  " Never  forget  that  the  best  decorative 
art  is  the  grandest  and  noblest  art  in  all  the 
world,  but  it  has  its  limitations  in  certain 
ways,  and  when  those  are  disregarded  it 
becomes  foolish  and  vulgar,  and  at  once  is 
beloved  by  the  Philistine  and  the  thought- 
less.' ' 

One  point  I  wish  to  mention  here,  and 
possibly  some  painter  or  architect  may  be 
able  to  answer  it  and  enlighten  me,  viz.: 


132         GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


Is  the  art  of  fresco  painting  so  wholly  lost 
that  perforce  these  panels  by  De  Chavannes, 
Sargent  and  others  must  needs  be  done  on 
canvas  and  glued  to  the  walls,  and  not  done, 
as  of  old,  in  the  plaster?  We  all  know  of 
the  melancholy  condition  of  the  Hunt  mural 
decorations  in  the  Capitol  at  Albany,  but  has 
no  one,  except  the  ordinary  house  decorator, 
learned  the  secret  of  direct  painting  on  the 
plaster  ? 

If  these  men  would  not  come  to  Boston 
and  paint  on  the  walls,  then,  in  my  opinion, 
it  would  have  been  better  and  more  expedient 
to  have  given  native  men  the  chance  and 
glory  of  trying,  at  least. 

Thanking  you,  Mr.  Editor,  in  advance  for 
your  courtesy,  and  asking  your  pardon  and 
indulgence  for  the  time  I  have  taken,  I  am 
your  obliged  servant, 

George  Frederick  Munn. 


REPRODUCTIONS  OF  THE 
PAINTINGS  OF 
GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


MEADOWSWEET 


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ON  THE  KENNET 


CORNISH  TRAWLERS  AT  REST 


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MEADOW  AND  TREES 


OLD  TREES,  BRITTANY 


OLD  MAN'S  HEAD  (ETCHING) 


HARMONY  IN  ROSE  AND  BLUE 


THE  JAPANESE  SCREEN  (A  HARMONY  IN  BLUE) 


JAPANESE  STILL-LIFE  GROUP 


LILY  POND,  NORMANDY 


STUDY  FOR  PORTRAIT  OF  MISS  


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TREES  AND  SUNSET 


ART  IS  LONG  AND  TIME  IS  FLEETING. 


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LIST  OF  THE  PRINCIPAL  WORKS 
OP  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


LIST  OF  THE  PRINCIPAL  WORKS 
OF  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 

With  Date  and  Place  of  Exhibition 

1874  Toast:    A  bit  of  Studio  life.    Study  in 

black  and  white.  Sold  to  William 
Fletcher,  Esq.,  Brigham  Hill,  Carlisle. 

1875  Evening.   Oil  sketch:  (3%  x  9  in.).  Owned 

by  S.  E.  Waller,  Esq. 
Meadow  Sweet.    Oil  study. 

"Kich  cymes  of  fragrant  Meadow  Sweet 
Alas !  those  creamy  clusters  lend 
A  charm  where  death  and  odors  meet." 1 
Dudley  Gallery.    Calder  Campbell. 
Sold  to  W.  H.  Mitchell,  Esq.,  4  Kings 
Bench  Walk,  Temple,  London. 

i  A  flower-picture  here,  noticeable  for  the  absence  of  manu- 
facturing deftness,  which  goes  so  far  to  neutralize  the 
beauties  of  M.  Fantin's  work,  is  the  large  and  most  careful 
study  (B31)  wild  flowers,  meadow-sweet  the  chief,  to  which 
is  attached  a  new  name,  G.  F.  Munn.  This  is  evidently ,  a 
labor  of  love,  full  of  the  most  minute  and  loving  study,  such 
as  a  man  gives  who  finds  both  intense  pleasure  in  his  work 
and  the  subject  of  it — such  labor  as  only  young  men  can  give, 
for  only  they  are  sustained  by  such  keenness  and  freshness  of 
delight. — Artists  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  in  the  London 
"Saturday  Review." 

137 


138 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


Roses:    Dudley  Gallery.2 
Wildflowers:    Dudley  Gallery.2 

1876  A  Sunny  Day.  Pout-Aven. 
Flowers.    Sold  to  Lady  Atkinson. 

1877  A  Brittany  Model  (Child).    Exhibited  by 

Society  of  British  Artists. 
Wallflowers.    Exhibited    at    Royal  Acad- 
emy, owned  by  Y.  H.  Lovegrove,  Esq., 
Esher,  Surrey. 

1878  A  Gray  Day,  Brittany.    Exhibited  at  Royal 

Academy,  owned  by  Y.  Maddocks,  26 
Booth  Street,  Bradford. 
A    Reconnaissance.    Exhibited    at  Royal 
Academy,  owned  by  R.  R.  Winans,  Balti- 
more, Md. 

Art  Needlework.    Exhibited  at  Brighton. 
Lost  and  Awfully  Frightened. 
Moonlight. 

Sunlight,    Brittany.    Exhibited    at  Royal 
Academy. 

1879  Breton  Quarrymakers.    Exhibited  at  Royal 

Academy,  owned  by  Y.  Smith,  14  The 

Buttons,  South  Kensington. 
Cornish  Trawlers  at  Rest.    Exhibited  at 

Dudley  Gallery.    Sold  to  Messrs.  Agnew 

&  Sons,  Manchester,  Eng. 
Radishes.    Exhibited  at  Royal  Hibernian 

Academy,  Dublin. 
2  Book  typewritten. 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  139 


1880  A  Berkshire  Idyll.    Exhibited  at  Society  of 

British  Artists. 
The  Back  Door.    Leeds  Spring  Exhibition, 
owned    by    Professor    Marshall,  M.A., 
Leeds,    exhibited    at    Dudley  Gallery; 
owned  by  Y.  H.  Tonlinson,  Esq.3 

1881  Amusing  His  Lordship. 

Art  is  Long  and  Time  is  Fleeting,  etc.  Ex- 
hibited at  Royal  Academy.  Sold  to 
Y.  H.  Tonlinson,  Esq.,  Huddersfield. 

An  Old  Master.4  Walker  Art  Gallery. 
Owned  by  Henry  Duncan,  7  Belvidere 
Road,  Prince's  Park,  Liverpool. 

3  Letter  W.  A.  Duncan.  4  The  subject  of  the  picture  is 
well  chosen.  It  depicts  an  artist  of  venerable  aspect,  such  as 
one  would  imagine  Watts  or  Titian  to  have  been  in  extreme 
age.  Wearing  a  skull  cap  from  which  streams  out  an 
abundance  of  white  hair,  circling  a  head  of  much  distinction, 
the  old  master,  clad  in  a  long  robe  with  a  broad  sable  collar, 
sits  in  the  growing  feebleness  of  age  in  an  ample  armchair  of 
solid  make  with  great  spiral  legs  and  cross  supports  beneath. 
The  old  man  is  giving  the  finishing  touches  to  what  he  evi- 
dently contemplates  as  likely  to  be  the  final  product  of  his  art, 
an  Andromeda  chained  to  the  rock.  The  picture,  already 
framed,  stands  upon  a  solid  easel  of  plain  oak,  and  within 
reach  of  the  artist  stands  a  large  vase  filled  with  paint 
brushes.  A  screen  is  fixed  behind  the  artist  to  protect  the  old 
man  from  draughts,  and  to  the  right  of  the  spectator  is 
another  armchair  upholstered  in  green  placed  against  the  wall 
of  the  studio  and  above  the  chair  hangs  a  picture,  while  vari- 
ous portfolios  containing  studies  lie  here  and  there  about  the 
room. 


140  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


Arcadia.  Owned  by  W.  D.  Hall,  Bright- 
side,  Little  King's  Hill,  Great  Missenden, 
Bucks. 

1882    Between  Sunlight  and  Moonlight.  Exhib- 
ited at  Grosvenor  Gallery;  sold  to  A.  B. 
Winterbotham,   Norman   Hill,  Pursley, 
Gloucestershire.5 
(19x13.) 

Landscape.    Exhibited  at  Royal  Academy.6 

Moonrise.  Owned  by  Sir  Johnston  Forbes- 
Robertson. 

Six  Venetian  Pictures. 

One  Joyous  little  Landscape.  Owned  in 
London,  England. 

Pumpkins,  South  of  France.  Exhibited  at 
Royal  Academy. 

"The  World  is  Changed 

The  Sun's  away,"  etc.    (R.  Browning.) 
Owned  by  C.  H.  Rickards,  Esq.,  Old 
Trafford,  Manchester. 

The  First  Snow.  Exhibited  at  Royal  Acad- 
emy. 

Low  Tide,  Normandy:  The  Walls  of  La 
Hogue.  Autumn  sketch.  Owned  by  Y. 
H.  Tonlinson,  Esq. 

The  Little  Gleaner.  Owned  by  Y.  H.  Ton- 
linson, Esq.,  Union  Bank,  Huddersfield. 

5  Letter  H.  Hogue. 

■  It  represents  an  Old  Farm  by  a  pool  and  there  is  an  ave- 
nue of  trees  to  the  right  at  right  angles  to  the  buildings.  A 
crescent  moon  is  rising  in  the  background  above  the  farm, 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  141 


1883  Passing  Showers.    Exhibited  at  Grosvenor 

Gallery. 

"The  Wild  March  winds  are  Mowing,"  etc. 
Exhibited  at  Royal  Academy. 

1884  The  Story  of  the  Church.    Exhibited  at  the 

Royal  Academy. 

1885  A  Tale  of  Woe. 

Cornish  Trawlers.  Sold  to  Mr.  Holt,  Sud- 
ley,  Mossley  Hill,  Liverpool. 

In  Chancery.  Exhibited  at  Grosvenor  Gal- 
lery. Owned  by  Hon.  Stephen  Cole- 
ridge, 7  Egerton  Mansions,  South  Ken- 
sington, S.  W. 

In  the  Hayfield.  Exhibited  at  Grosvenor 
Gallery;  owned  by  Mr.  W.  D.  Hall, 
Brightside,  Little  King's  Hill,  Great  Mis- 
senden,  Bucks. 

Portrait  of  a  Lady  (M.  C).  Destroyed. 

The  Culprit. 

The  Enchanted  City.  Owned  by  Miss 
Elizabeth  Bartol,  Chestnut  Street,  Bos- 
ton. 

1885  Walls  of  La  Hogue.    Exhibited  at  Dudley 

Gallery. 

1886  On    the    Kennett.7    Exhibited    at  Royal 

Academy. 


reflecting  the  latter  and  trees  in  the  pool  which  occupies  the 
whole  of  the  foreground. 

*  The  Saturday  Review  pronounced  this  to  be  the  finest  ex 


142  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 

1892   Rhode  Island  Idyll  (6  ft.  x  4  ft.).  Some 
Pine  Trees  and  Sandbanks.    Sold  about 
1881-2  in  Manchester. 
( "  His  best  work. ' '    Cheston. ) 

Country  Scene.  Trees  and  barn  in  back- 
ground; River  with  punt:  foreground, 
strong  shadows.  Owned  by  Caroline 
Bell,  Cavendish  Road,  N.  "W.,  London. 

Breton  Peasants  pushing  a  Cart  laden  with 
Blocks  of  Stone.  Owned  by  Baroness 
Gray,  14  The  Boltons,  South  Kensington, 
London.  Bought  later  by  Mary  R.  Cabot, 
Brattleboro,  Vt. 

Bretagne.    Exhibited  at  Salon,  Paris. 

L'Hovir  San  Rafael.  Exhibited  at  Salon, 
Paris. 

Country  Road  in  Autumn.  Owned  by  Dr. 
Henry  C.  Baldwin,  126  Commonwealth 
Ave.,  Boston. 


OWNED  BY  MARGARET  C.  MUNN 


Brittany 

Normandy — After  Sunset 
Normandy  Haycocks — Sunset 
Seven  Little  Trees. 
Old  Church,  Normandy. 


ample  of  a  solid  and  serious  style  in  the  whole  Exhibition  at 
The  Royal  Academy  of  that  year. 


GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN  143 


Old  Fish  Pools,  Woolhampton. 

Storm,  Annisquam. 

The  River,  Annisquam. 

River  and  Meadows,  Annisquam. 

Old  Post  Office,  Woolhampton. 

Old  Breton  Wood  Shed. 

Vase  and  Roses. 

An  Old  Violin.  Sketch. 

An  Eastern  Seaport. 

Venice.    Very  small  painting — very  fine. 

Two  very  small  and  beautiful  landscapes — Trees  and 

Meadows. 
Meadow  and  Stream. 
London  Bridge — Sunset. 
Several  Unfinished  Sketches. 

OWNED  BY  J.  KENNEDY  TOD 
Moonlight.    Very  beautiful. 

OWNED  BY  ROSS  WINANS  OP  BALTIMORE 
Old  Breton  Stable  Yard. 

OWNED  BY  MRS.  WINCHESTER  DONALD 
An  American  Beauty  Rose. 

OWNED  BY  MRS.  GARRETT  R.  PIER,  OF 
NEW  YORK 

Head  of  Old  Man.  (Etching) 


144  GEORGE  FREDERICK  MUNN 


Paintings 

Copy  of  three  men  from  a  painting  of  Tintoretto. 

Head  and  shoulders  of  each  figure. 
Normandy  Landscape. 
Corner  of  Munkacsy's  studio.    Still  life. 
Japanese  Bowl  and  Flowers. 
Small  Japanese  Bowl  and  Pansies. 
Normandy  Peasant  Girl. 
Normandy  Peasant  before  a  Shrine. 
The  Deserted  Farm. 
Girl  by  the  Sea. 

Copy  of  the  figure  of  the  Magdalen  in  Titian's  "Noli 

me  Tangere." 
Normandy  Church  (with  child  looking  toward  it). 

OWNED  BY  MRS.  J.  M.  COOK,  OF  NEW  YORK 

1.  Breton  Wash  House. 

2.  The  Fort  of  La  Hogue. 

3.  Evening    (Crescent  moon  and  daisy  fields.) 

4.  Fruits.    Still  life. 

5.  Twilight. 


GETTY  RESEARCH  INSTITUTE 


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